Download Macbook Pro Recovery Disk

23-04-2021

Download Macbook Pro Recovery Disk

After the amount of responses my last blog post on the mysterious “too many corpses” error on macOS Sierra and High Sierra, I realized there was a need to do an ultimate guide on recovering macOS, going step by step through the different ways to do so from easiest and least risky to the hardest and last resort options.

Who am I to write this? I’m the Director of Engineering for a startup transitioning from a small to a medium-sized business, and we’ve grown to a fair number of employees while not forming any sort of IT department. That means part of my responsibility is keeping all our office equipment up while distracting me as little as possible. I’ll write more about some of the other battle-tested solutions I’ve discovered over the coming week as well.

Let me know if you find this useful, or if anything is unclear or missing and I’ll update it. And, on a final note, the best way to protect your data is to keep frequent backups. Samsung makes a inexpensive 128GB flash drive that’ll work great for 128GB MacBook and MacBook Airs and Seagate makes a 1TB external drive that’ll work great for anything larger.

For everything that’s about to follow, you should have backups. Following these instructions could recover your Mac but could also destroy your data. You’ve been warned.

From Apple's website: 'To create an external OS X Recovery, download the OS X Recovery Disk Assistant application. Insert an external drive, launch the OS X Recovery Disk Assistant, select the drive where you would like to install, and follow the on screen instructions. Emergency Boot CD-ROM Pro 0.6.1 EBCD is a bootable CD, intended for system recovery in the case of software or hardware faults. It is able to create backup copies of normally working system and restore system to saved state.EBCD is a bootable CD, intended for system recovery in the case of software or hardware faults. It is able to create backup copies of normally.

Let’s start by going through the symptoms one by one:

MacBook Pro Power Button Stops Working

If you have a new MacBook or MacBook Pro with butterfly switches (the new style keys with very little travel), it’s possible something got caught into the switch. Even a crumb of food or a stray hair can cause a key (including the Power key) to become unresponsive. If closing and opening the lid or plugging into AC power causes the Mac to power on but the power button won’t, simply hold the Mac at a 90º angle and blast those keys with compressed air. Failing that you’ll need to contact Apple Support as the keyboard on new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are non-user serviceable.

Mac Doesn’t Power On At All (no chime, no Apple logo)

If you’re using a MagSafe connector, make sure the light turns green when plugged in. If it doesn’t, and you’re sure you’re getting AC power, you’ll need a new adapter and it’s likely your MacBook has a dead battery. Borrow a friend’s charger to verify.

If you’re using a USB-C charged MacBook model, there’s no visual sign the cable is working without the Mac turned on. The best bet is if you’re sure you’re getting power to try another cable. If a new or borrowed cable works, you’ve found your issue.

If you’re on an iMac, especially an older iMac, there’s surge protection within the iMac and you should try unplugging for 2 minutes and then plugging back in to see if it then turns on correctly. If not, check the cabling and connections and make sure you have AC power. If the cable is cut or crimped, replace it. If it’s a Mac with user-serviceable RAM, double-check the RAM is properly inserted and, if possible reseat it to make sure some corrosion hasn’t caused a lack of contact.

Mac Chimes Over and Over

This may signal a lack of good power connection or improperly inserted RAM, follow the steps for Mac Doesn’t Power On At All above to rule them out.

Try clearing your NVRAM.

Lastly, it’s also possible the bootloader is corrupted, in which case you’ll want to follow the Booting Into Recovery instructions below.

iMac/MacBook Boot Hangs on Apple Logo

First, is there a progress bar? If there is and it’s progressing, there’s a chance the Mac is installing updates. The upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra took about 3 hours on one of my machines. Leave it for an hour, if a time remaining indicator hasn’t appeared by then continue with the instructions below.

Try clearing your NVRAM. If that fails, boot into verbose mode to see if you can get more details. Lastly, you’ll want to Boot into Recovery.

Mac Boots to a No Entry Symbol

The hard drive is missing, not detected, corrupted or empty. You’ll want to try The Stages list below to see if it’s recoverable.

Stage 1: Recover macOS

If you’ve check the Symptoms list above and your Mac isn’t working correctly, your first step is recovery. Boot into Recovery Mode and open the Disk Utility, then click your internal disk and click mount in the toolbar. If it mounts, click First Aid in the toolbar and proceed to complete a check. If all succeeds, reboot and cross your fingers.

If you can’t mount your internal drive, there’s a good chance it’s corrupt. You’ll want to look into recovery options if you don’t have a current backup. If you have a backup and are ready to start from scratch skip right to Stage 3.

Stage 2: Reinstall macOS

If Stage 1 fails, your next option is to reinstall. To do this, boot into recovery and then enter Disk Utility as in Stage 1 to mount your internal drive.If your are able to mount your internal drive from Disk Utility a reinstall should keep your user profile and applications in tact and only reinstall the core OS. Then, close Disk Utility and when the Recovery menu appears again click “Install macOS” and follow the wizard to completion.

Stage 3: Hard Reinstall macOS

Part of this stage involves formatting your drive. Even if it wasn’t gone before, this will destroy all your data and start your Mac from scratch.

To do a Hard Reinstall, boot into Recovery Mode and open Disk Utility. Select your internal disk and choose Format in the toolbar. If you are given the option, select “Mac OS Extended”, if you’re not given that option choose “APFS”. Format the drive. Close Disk Utility and open Install macOS and go through the wizard to install macOS on the empty drive.

Stage 4: Super Hard Reinstall macOS

APFS still seems to have some bugs, and if your Stage 3 Hard Reinstall fails with a “Could not create a Preboot Volume for APFS” message, you’ll need to take some extra steps. Firstly, to do this stage you must boot into Recovery Mode from an External USB drive (see below for creation instructions). Follow the Stage 3 directions until you reach the Disk Utility. There, select your internal drive and click the Delete Volume toolbar button.

Once you do, your internal drive will vanish. Close Disk Utility and then re-open Disk Utility. You’ll see an internal drive named something like “Container 0”. Select it, and choose Format from the toolbar. Select “Mac OS Extended” as the type and format the drive. Then close Disk Utility, and run Install macOS. The macOS installer will re-format the volume as APFS, but this process of formatting the drive as Mac OS Extended seems to clear the bad container scheme of APFS that no other method I’ve found is able to.

Clear your NVRAM

Clear your NVRAM shut down your Mac or force it to shut down by holding the power button for 10 seconds. Next, keep the Command (⌘)-Option (⌥)-P-R keys pressed down as you power on again. Press down all four at once until you hear the second chime or the Apple logo appears and disappears twice, then release.

Boot into Verbose Mode

Think of Verbose Mode as your Mac laying on a couch and telling you everything about what it’s doing. If you have a retina display is output is going to be incredibly small, you’ll want to keep your glasses handy. To get into verbose mode, turn off your Mac. Hold down the power button for 10 seconds to force a shut down if needed. Next, keep the Command (⌘)-V keys pressed down as you power on again. You should set console logs scroll by as your Mac attempts to boot.

If you’re having boot trouble, you’ll want to focus on the last 5 or so lines and look for errors. Googling these will usually yield decent results for fixes, although in my experience most of the are going to end up with you in Recovery Mode doing a reinstall.

Boot into Recovery Mode

Via the Recovery Partition

If your drive is intact, shutting down the (holding down the power button for 10 seconds if necessary) and then holding Command (⌘)-R as you start it back up will bring you into the recovery environment. From here, you can follow the Recover, Reinstall or Hard Reinstall instructions above.

Via the Internet

If the Recovery Partition isn’t working or you want to gain access to the newest OS recovery partition for your Mac internet recovery is for you. Follow the instructions as above but this time hold Command (⌘)-Shift (⇧)-R while starting up. This will take a bit longer to load up, as the recovery image is downloaded from Apple.

Via the Internet via Boot Selection

This is interesting, and I’ve never figured out exactly why it behaves differently, but in my experience doing this method seems to download and boot either the recovery partition your machine shipped with, or the previous version of macOS from Apple.

Your mileage may vary here, but to do it shut down your Mac (holding down power for 10 seconds if needed) and hold down the Option or Alt (on some external keyboards) key during power on. You should get prompted with a screen asking what drive to boot from and offering to let you connect to the network wirelessly or automatically connecting if Ethernet is available. Once connected, an Internet Recovery option will appear you can select and boot from.

Via a Flash Drive

If you’re a prepper or have a friend who’s willing down to download the 8-10GB installer for the version of macOS you want from the App Store, you can make a USB recovery drive and boot from that. For specific recovery cases (like a corrupted APFS Preboot) you must boot using this method to change the primary disk. To make a recovery USB drive, make sure to get a 8GB or higher capacity drive, download the macOS installer from the App Store on a working Mac, and use the Install Disk Creator tool to generate it.

To use a USB recovery drive, insert the drive into your Mac and hold down the Option (⌥) key while starting your machine. Select the Install disk when it appears in the list, which may take up to a minute. NOTE FOR USB-C USERS: Some USB-C adapters don’t support booting from attached media, even though they might work totally fine once macOS is fully booted. If you see your Install disk not showing up, try a different adapter. I’ve had the best luck with the Satechi adapter, and recommend keeping one on hand at least for maintenance if you’re maintaining a bunch of Macs. The theoretically ultimate solution to this is to instead use a USB-C flash drive, I’ve liked both of these.

Force Re-run Setup

If you have corruption for a specific user account, you can cause the macOS setup wizard to re-run and make a new user. From there you can copy out files that are important from the user account that’s not working. To do this:

1. 1. Start the Mac while holding down ⌘-S
  2. Check the startup disk for errors using:
    /sbin/fsck -fy
  3. Mount the startup disk using:
    /sbin/mount -uw /
  4. Remove the setup complete flag using:
    rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
  5. Run though the macOS installer to completion, making a new user in the process.
  6. Once done, you’ll have a new user account, and you’ll be able to navigate back to the other user by opening Finder, pressing ⌘-⇧-G and entering /Users and pressing Go
  7. Reboot the Mac and the setup wizard should relaunch, if it doesn’t the corruption may not be user-specific and you should try The Stages above.

By Gina Barrow, Last updated: April 29, 2020

We have always heard and read about taking backups with all our devices because we don’t know what will happen the next time we use it. However, there are still a number of people who take this note for granted and end up cramming for the best possible solution.

The good news is, there is still a big chance that you can recover your data from a damaged Mac Book Pro hard drive. As long as the hard drive is fine, you can practically use it in any Mac computer and recover all your important data.

So we came up with this article to guide you on how to recover data from Mac Book Pro hard drive including the best data recovery software to use plus other relevant situations where data recovery is highly expected.

How to Recover Data from Macbook Pro Hard Drive the Most Efficiently

In this article, there are 4 common ways recommended for you to recover data from Macbook Pro hard drive. Among them, the most efficient one to do the data recovery is with FoneDog Data Recovery. Here are the steps in details:

Select files for recovery and choose Macbook Pro hard drive.
Allow the program to scan the Macbook Pro hard drive.
Preview all data and recover.

Part 1. The Best Software to Recover Data from Mac Book Pro Hard Drive

Before you head over to data recovery, the first thing you need to make sure is that your hard drive must still be working well when connected with a different Mac computer and should be recognized as external storage or hard drive.

After ensuring that this is possible, download for free FoneDog Data Recovery software. This recovery software is able to retrieve data from a crashed Windows or Mac computer and even deleted files.

It also performs recovery from hard drive, partition, SD/memory cards, and Flash drives. FoneDog Data Recovery ensures that you get all types of data stored inside your drives such as your pictures, archives, documents, videos, and many more.

So, how does FoneDog Data Recovery work?

Mac Os Installer

Data RecoveryRecover deleted image, document, audio and more files.Get deleted data back from computer (including Recycle Bin) and hard drives.Recover loss data caused by disk accident, operation system crushes and other reasons.

Step 1. Select Files for Recovery and Choose Macbook Pro Hard Drive

After you have connected the Mac Book Pro hard drive to another Mac and been recognized, launch the program FoneDog Data Recovery and onset, select the types of files you wish to retrieve. By default, all these files are selected but you can always customize your choices.

Under the file, types would be the recovery storage location. Since we are going to retrieve the data from the connected hard drive, it should be listed as Removable Storage. Select this option and then click Scan to proceed to the next step.

Step 2. Allow Program to Scan the Macbook Pro Hard Drive

You will be given two scanning choices on the next screen. The Quick and Deep scan modes wherein you can select which mode fits your current situation. Deep scan mode runs an in-depth scan and actually takes a lot longer compared to the Quick scan mode.

Step 3. Preview All Data and Recover

FoneDog Data Recovery will display all the scanned data on your screen based on its type list and path list. All files are sorted as well according to its format and category so you won’t have a hard time looking for your files.

From here, you can preview each item and highlight them for recovery. You can select them all or only choose those files you think are more important. Click the Recover button and confirm the action.

You can also set the destination location on your computer.

You have now successfully recovered your data from a Mac Book Pro hard drive! The best thing about FoneDog Data Recovery is you can use it in any other situation like recovering deleted files or restoring data from other storage devices.

Part 2. 2 More Ways on How to Fix a Failed Macbook Pro Hard Drive

If in another case your hard drive crashed and you discovered that it can still get repaired, then you can practically learn from this guide on how to fix it.

First, you just have to make sure that it is not beyond repair after that, follow these two solutions on how to resolve your hard drive issue.

Solution 1. Use Disk Utility

Apple Macbook Pro A1278 Recovery Disk Download

Launch Disk Utility and open the hard drive that you are having issues with on the left side
Click First Aid and click Run on the message box asking for permission to allow First Aid to check the volume
Wait for the First Aid to complete the check. Disk Utility will resolve any conflicts it may come across during the scan
Click Done after the scan is completed

Solution 2. Enter Recovery Mode (Standard macOS Recovery)

In most troubleshooting cases, a reboot could alleviate any further issues and often fix whatever problems are dealing with.

The macOS recovery contains the latest version of the operating system installed on your make and has the options to fix various issues you are experiencing with the current one.

However, using macOS recovery will erase everything stored inside your Mac thus it is safe to keep a backup of all your files via Time Machine or whatever backup options deemed possible at the moment.

After you have created a backup, follow this guide on how to enter MacOS recovery:

Click Restart from the Apple logo located at the top-left of your screen
Press and hold Command + R one the spinning globe or the apple logo appears
Wait for the macOS utility window to appear
Select Reinstall OS option

Solution 3. Internet Recovery

Another option for macOS Recovery is to use the internet recovery method which restarts your Macbook directly from apple’s servers and then performs all the needed troubleshooting.

Follow these steps to enter Internet recovery:

Restart your Mac
Hold the Command + R keys after the startup chime
Gently release the buttons when the spinning globe appears
Once ready, you will be asked to connect to the internet. Supply the needed internet details in order for the internet recovery to begin
Wait for the process to be completed. Internet recovery will download a system recovery image from the servers. After that, it will start up similarly to the standard macOS Recovery and re-install a factory default macOS.