Booting to a harddrive screen?!

[a84c72]

I’m running a mid 2012 MacBook Pro. I’ve been on Yosemite up until a few weeks ago. In the past, Apple has told to go from Yosemite to High Sierra and I was always met with with freezing and beach balls so I’ve resorted back. Then, Yosemite started being crappy and Apple gave me a link to go to Sierra. BAM. Smooth as silk. Then, I realized I am missing pictures from photos so I tried to get them from a restore on my backup. That gave me clouds (no pictures) and triangles with exclamation points. I don’t use cloud. Yes, I’m sure. Previously, Apple walked me through fixing an issue and iCloud was off. So, I thought, “ok...if I’m going to lose pictures with upgrades, I’ll use iCloud.”. In the meantime, I realized spotlight was disabled and trying to enable caused me a never ending beach ball and read a msg (part of a diagnosis log) that popped up that there was no system plist. I reinstalled Sierra and deleted the spotlight plist. Smooth as can be now.... this morning, I booted up...no problem. This afternoon at a boot, instead of going to the login screen, I get this white screen. The screen had a picture of the harddrive with an arrow under it pointing up. Below it, a drop down box that says “choose network”. I’ve been using a Mac since 2011 and have never seen this one. I couldn’t move my mouse on this screen at all. My only option was to do a hard shutdown. I rebooted and everything is normal now. First Aid shows no problems but I’m wondering if I should be concerned or if I need to do anything? Appreciate any help!

 

[jbarley]

If you'd like to see that screen again, try booting up while holding the alt key down.
Can we assume you tried the enter (Return) key before you did the hard shutdown?

 

[a84c72]

If you'd like to see that screen again, try booting up while holding the alt key down.
Can we assume you tried the enter (Return) key before you did the hard shutdown?[/QUO

If you'd like to see that screen again, try booting up while holding the alt key down.
Can we assume you tried the enter (Return) key before you did the hard shutdown?

If you'd like to see that screen again, try booting up while holding the alt key down.
Can we assume you tried the enter (Return) key before you did the hard shutdown?

That machine wasn’t having any part of any input...keyboard or otherwise. It freaked me out and was relieved when it rebooted to where it is supposed to be. Should I be concerned with anything? Do I need to do anything else or was it a fluke/user error? What does that screen do?

 

[Fishrrman]

If this proves to be "a one-time thing", I wouldn't worry too much.

However, if the 2012 MacBook Pro you have is "non-retina" (if it has a DVD drive, you have the non-retina version), the internal SATA ribbon cable can "get flaky". When this happens, it may "look like" a failing internal drive, but it's not -- it's just the cable.

Apple (for a time) had a free "cable replacement program" -- they'd swap out the old cable for a fresh one. Not sure if this is still in effect.

Again, if it doesn't happen again, don't spend too much time worrying over it.

 

[a84c72]

If this proves to be "a one-time thing", I wouldn't worry too much.

However, if the 2012 MacBook Pro you have is "non-retina" (if it has a DVD drive, you have the non-retina version), the internal SATA ribbon cable can "get flaky". When this happens, it may "look like" a failing internal drive, but it's not -- it's just the cable.

Apple (for a time) had a free "cable replacement program" -- they'd swap out the old cable for a fresh one. Not sure if this is still in effect.

Again, if it doesn't happen again, don't spend too much time worrying over it.

Thank you so much!!!! I have non-retina, but I haven’t seen the screen again, thankfully. If I do get it again, I’ll look into the cable. Appreciate your help!