Hard Drive Issue - Macintosh HD Not Showing in Disk Utility

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help with a hard drive/boot problem.

I am running a Macbook Pro 13" i5 2011 and have run into some problems. Last week my internal Hard Drive started making a ticking noise when accessing files, indicating it could be failing. So I tried backing up important files to another Mac using Target Disk Mode over Thunderbolt. As I was about to copy the files over, the Macbook's Macintosh HD disappeared from Finder on the other Mac.

I then tried plugging the Macbook into another computer via Target Disk Mode, and the MacHD was still not showing up. However, my Windows Bootcamp partition was still there and is operating fine... so obviously the physical spinning HD is OK for now.

When I started up the Mac in Recovery Mode Disk Utility, the MacHD was replaced by a greyed out disk called 'Untitled'. I think here is where I made a mistake: I thought maybe the disk somehow became unmounted, so I clicked 'Mount/Unmount.' That didn't help & the MacHD still didn't show up in target disk mode on the other Mac. Currently, Mac OSX does not boot at all.

What would you suggest to recover the data from Macintosh HD partition?


Sorry this is a complex issue - I so appreciate any advice or tips you have.
Thank you
Jesse

Go into Recovery Mode again and see if Disk First Aid is available. If it is run that but sounds like you are looking at a failed hard drive. Take it you have everythong backed up to an external hard drive?

Thanks for the reply mate! In the Untitled Drive (previously Macintosh HD) First Aid is greyed out and unavailable.
However, I am able to Mount the Untitled Drive. Should I do this?

I don't quite understand how the physical hard-drive could fail for the MacHD partition, but not the Bootcamp?

(Btw, in terms of backup, my last one was 5 months ago, but most of my stuff is on Dropbox. There are some files I could loose tho.)

The Mac portion of the drive may be physically OK and have a directory structure that has gotten pretty well scrambled.

I'd try to mount the drive. It shouldn't make matters worse. If the drive mounts you should be able to attempt to run Disk First Aid.

Thanks Slydude! I tried to 'Mount' the MacHD partition and that unfortunately didn't do anything or enable Disk First Aid.

Any other ideas?

No other than the drive has failed. You have done the trouble shooting. A utility such as DiskWarrior may save it, but by the time you pay I think $129 could have purchased another drive. I would go for an SSD.

Thanks harryb2448. I think we can conclude it is quite a deep failure (either in the drives directory is compremises or actual hard drive partition failure).
Some other forums recommended Disk Warrior or DataRescue, so might look at them as alternatives to a professional data recovery service. Thank you for that!

We might first try removing the HD & connecting it to an external SATA enclosure like suggested here: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/please-help-macbook-internal-drive-wont-mount.684803/


So appreciate your help!
Haha, hopefully Apple releases a new MB Pro soon & we'll upgrade! ?