Mac won't boot for anything

[pantstofry]

It's been a while since I've been on here, and I'm sorry if I sound a bit panicked, but my Mac froze this morning. Like completely locked up. So I shut it down, and when rebooting I got that flashing question mark folder. I tried resetting PRAM, option+reboot, single user mode, nothing has worked. Should I try to put an OS install on a USB or perhaps connect to another computer via USB/FireWire? Thanks so much for your support guys. I've got a few papers due in a couple hours and I'm really fretting over this. I'll stay online in case you need more info.

 

[chscag]

It sounds like your hard drive may have gone south on you. Do you have a backup of your data?

If you have another Mac, you can try using "Target Disk Mode" to access the hard drive on the machine that refuses to boot. However, if the drive is damaged (controller, electronics, heads) it may be impossible to access the data without using a data extraction service which can be very expensive.

 

[pantstofry]

I used to back up hourly on time machine. But since I am at school I don't have it with me. I was really hoping it wasn't the hard drive... Looks like I'm losing at least 6 months of data... Better than 5 years I suppose.

How does an HD suddenly go bad like that? I had a perfectly good Mac this morning and now it won't go. Shame. Especially since I've got all of my schoolwork on there...moan....


Thank you for the quick reply

 

[chscag]

Unfortunately, hard drives fail suddenly and without warning. Another thing you can try.... remove the hard drive and place it in a SATA USB carrier and attach it to another Mac. You may get lucky and be able to access the data that way. Sometimes that will work. Of course you'll also need a new hard drive for your machine and the install media to get back up and running again.