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akkast Author

Level 1

7 points

Failed Macintosh HD, can't boot up, can I still recover files?

Hi all,

I have a Macbook Pro 13" from 2011 with OS Sierra. For the past couple of days it was slow, crushing, freezing, I had to do hard shut-down several times.

1. This morning I only got to the grey screen with apple logo. The loading bar got to the end but even after about hour waiting, it never skipped to the part where you enter password. I tried to boot up several times.

2. I then tried to start up with cmmd + S, and when the loading bar was about halfway, Macbook just shut down.

3. I tried recovery boot with cmmd + R. Then I run First Aid on Macintosh HD and ... it failed. It said that this volume can't be repaired and that I should backup.

4. I tried to start it normally again and it shut down like in point 2 above.

What do I do now?

- I saved some files and documents on occasion, but never did any proper backup, so basically everything is there...I dont want to lose it, especially photos. (I had them on external drive and that is damaged as well.) Irony is, I will have a new external HDD delivered tomorrow as I was expecting this to happen and wanted to backup.

Is there a way to recover files?

I read something about using firewire to connect to another Macbook?

And the Macbook itself - will it be enough to change the drive? I can't afford new one now.

Many thanks for any suggestions.

Posted on Apr 24, 2018 2:38 PM

Best reply

macjack

Level 10

111,174 points

Posted on Jul 30, 2018 11:53 AM

Yes, you can try Target Disk Mode to connect to another Mac and try to copy over your files that way. Or when you replace the disk put the old one in an enclosure and use it externally to copy the files. Either way the disk effectively becomes like an external hard drive.

macOS Sierra: Transfer files between two computers using target disk mode

If you use target disk Mode you'll need to connect them with a firewire, thunderbolt or usb cable depending on what ports are available on those Macs. You may also need an adaptor cable.

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Failed Macintosh HD, can't boot up, can I still recover files?

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