Macbook Pro froze, can't reboot

Hi, I have an early-2011 macbook pro 13'' and I was using it normally when everything froze. My word and excel froze and every time i tried opening chrome it kept crashing. I figured I could just hold the power button for 5 seconds to turn it off and when I turned it back on I was prompted with the OS X Utilities window, and when I try to run my computer normally my hard drive isn't available, as if my startup disk completely disappeared! I tried holding option while booting but it just shows the Recovery HD disk, not my local disk. Please help! I have no backup of my computer anywhere and have important school material on it! Thank you

My first thought is...how full is/was your HD? If it's full...you won't be able to boot from the internal HD's main partition...you will need to boot the computer from something external. Then you will be able to access the internal HD...and delete/move some files to make space.

If your internal HD wasn't full...then you need to boot into the Recovery partition...launch Disk Utility...then try repairing the disk.

Of course there we should always have backups...or at least have all important files backed up.

- Nick

I tried

I am currently waiting for Mavericks to install on my external 1 TB portable disk to see if that might help and see if i can recover my files afterward. I don't believe though that it was near being full as I only use it for files such as word and excel, I have not installed games or stuff like that. I tried to repair it in the Disk Utility as you suggested, but it was unable to repair it for some reason!
Anyway, I'll wait and see if it works with the external hard drive and if not do you have any other suggestions?

-Jerm

jerm106 said:

I am currently waiting for Mavericks to install on my external 1 TB portable disk to see if that might help and see if i can recover my files afterward.

Click to expand...

Awesome. Great that you had an external HD to boot from (after the OS install). Hopefully booting the computer from the external HD will give you access to the internal drive.

If not...the worst may have happened...some sort of HD crash (let's hope not).

Another idea if you cannot get access is using a program called "Disk Warrior"...which helps assist recovering info on a problematic HD. But Disk Warrior costs about $100...and there are no guarantees of recovery.

Good luck,

- Nick

Thanks

Thanks Nick! I will look into that if it does not work and I might also go see if my local Apple store ight not be able to help me!

jerm106 said:

... might also go see if my local Apple store ight not be able to help me!

Click to expand...

Excellent idea! Good luck again.

- Nick