It’s frustrating when you turn on your Mac and discover that your hard drive is corrupted. A corrupted hard drive can cause all sorts of problems, from preventing you from accessing your files to causing your system to crash. But don’t panic – there are ways to fix a corrupted hard drive on a Mac.
Here’s what to do.
First, let’s define what a corrupted hard drive is.
A hard drive becomes corrupted when the data on it becomes inaccessible or unreadable. This can happen for some reasons, including a power outage, a virus, or even just a glitch in the system.
If your Mac is having trouble starting up because of a corrupted hard drive, you’ll see a flashing folder with a question mark on your screen. This means that your Mac can’t find your startup disk, which is usually your hard drive.
To fix a corrupted hard drive on a Mac, you’ll need to start by booting into your Mac’s recovery mode. To do this, restart your Mac and hold down the Command and R keys as it’s starting up. This will bring up the macOS Utilities window.
From here, you have a few options.
If you want to try to repair your hard drive, you can use the Disk Utility.
To do this, click on the Disk Utility option in the macOS Utilities window, and then select your hard drive from the list on the left. Click on the First Aid tab, and then click on the Run button. This will scan your hard drive for any problems and try to fix them.
Here you will find a lot of useful information about Disk Utility, its history, functions, and so on.
In case the Disk Utility is unable to repair your hard drive, you can try to reinstall macOS.
To do this, click on the Reinstall macOS option in the macOS Utilities window. This will erase your hard drive and install a fresh copy of macOS. Keep in mind that this will erase any files on your hard drive, so make sure you have backups of your important files before doing this.
If your Mac still won’t start up after trying the above steps, or if you’re unable to access your files even when your Mac is running, you may need to replace your hard drive. This can be a complicated process, so it’s best to take your Mac to an Apple store or a certified repair shop to have it done.
It’s also important to regularly back up your files to prevent losing them in case of a hard drive failure. You can use Time Machine, which is a built-in backup tool on macOS, to automatically back up your files to an external hard drive.
To learn more about Time Machine read a Wikipedia article about it.
In summary, if you’re dealing with a corrupted hard drive on your Mac, try booting into recovery mode and using the Disk Utility to repair it. If that doesn’t work, try reinstalling macOS. If all else fails, you may need to replace your hard drive. And most importantly, make sure to back up your files regularly.
We hope this information has been helpful. Good luck!