Fix Folder with question mark on Mac:9. Check faulty hard drive

 

9. Check faulty hard drive

If your hard drive is faulty, the logic board cannot communicate with it, you will get a “mac flashing folder with question mark”. 

All pre-2013 MacBook and MacBook pro use mechanical hard drives. The majority of Apple iMac also use mechanical hard drives. These mechanical hard drives are prone to mechanical failure. If you can hear the clicking noise coming from the hard drive, you definitely have a faulty hard drive.

Another common problem for spinning drives is the motor getting stuck. Put your hand on the drive and switch on your Mac. If you cannot feel the vibration of the hard drive spin motor, the hard drive is faulty. Your Mac cannot find the bootable drive then display the question mark folder.

If the spinning hard drive is faulty, it is the time to upgrade to SSD drive now. MacBook Pro SSD upgrade and iMac SSD upgrade will significantly improve the performance.

If you have an SSD drive, switch on your Mac and wait for five minutes or so. Put your finger on the SSD controller chip ( the biggest chip). If the chip is cool, your SSD is dead. The SSD does not receive any power at all

                     

The above diagnoses are based on the assumption that your Mac logic board is good. If in doubt, get a known working Mac and try your hard drive again. If you still get a question mark folder, you have a good chance that the hard drive is faulty even though you can feel the motor spinning or SSD controller warming up.

On some 2013 to 2015  Samsung SSD drives, the SSD controller may develop crack soldering ball issues after continuing to expose to high operating temperature. If you put the drive in an oven at 180 to 200 Celsius degrees for two minutes,  it might work again as the cracked balls have been joined again. If the data is very important, do not try this method, get a reputable mac data recovery service provider as soon as possible. Please note that the second attempt to recover the data from a faulty hard drive is much harder or even impossible as the first attempt already destroyed some or all the data.