My MacBook Air shows a flashing question mark folder. I can’t access my files on my Mac, and the device cannot be repaired and bootable. How can I back up data on my MacBook? I worry that I will lose my files.
A flashing question-mark folder usually means your Mac can’t find a valid startup disk. The good news is that this doesn’t always mean your data is gone. If the internal drive is still readable, you can often recover files with a data recovery tool rather than back up your corrupted SSD.
iBoysoft Mac Recovery Mode is a special mode that allows you to directly launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac software in Recovery Mode to recover files from an unbootable Mac.
Different from other data recovery tools that always ask you to create a macOS bootable USB installer first before performing a data recovery task.
I suggest you restore your files in this tool ASAP to avoid permanent data loss.
Hey, don’t panic. I went through the same flashing question-mark issue on my MacBook Air last year. It wouldn’t boot either, and I thought all my files were gone. They weren’t.
Here’s what worked for me:
First, I opened macOS Recovery Mode and checked if the drive still showed up in Disk Utility. If it does, you might still be able to open it or back it up.
If you’ve got another Mac around, try Share Disk or Target Disk Mode. It basically turns your broken Mac into an external drive.
If the Mac refuses to boot at all or you think the above method is complicated, you can try starting it from a bootable USB installer and running a data recovery tool like iBoysoft Data Recovery software. It saved a lot of my documents.