My hard drive has failed. Is it worth installing a replacement drive in an 8 year old machine and would the extra cost of an SSD drive over an HDD give worthwhile improvement in performance? The machine has an intel core i5 processor and 16 mb RAM.
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15
If you have the 13" model, then make sure to also replace the hard drive SATA cable since this cable has an extremely high rate of failure in the 13" model especially after upgrading to an SSD. The non-Retina model is the last good and easily upgradeable/repairable laptop Apple. With 16GB of memory an SSD upgrade would improve performance and extend the life of the laptop.
If you have the 13" model, then make sure to also replace the hard drive SATA cable since this cable has an extremely high rate of failure in the 13" model especially after upgrading to an SSD. The non-Retina model is the last good and easily upgradeable/repairable laptop Apple. With 16GB of memory an SSD upgrade would improve performance and extend the life of the laptop.
Your hard drive is definitely bad as it has about 50 reallocated blocks, plus the "Load Cycle Count" is getting near for the drive to be wearing out. In addition it looks like the drive suffered some damage from either an impact or from being moved too hard while powered on due to the "Free Fall Sensor" value.
I also think you have a defective internal hard drive SATA cable indicated by all the "UDMA CRC Errors".
Make sure to replace the internal hard drive SATA cable or you will have problems using the new SSD. You can purchase the cable from OWC.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/8211480/
I personally would not spend any money on a 2012 computer but if you do decide to replace the drive go for the SSD. Much faster and more reliable.
If you have an original hard drive installed, then I would imagine it is worn out or possibly failing depending on how much you used the laptop. Even if the drive is good it is a very slow model.
You can remove the drive and use an USB to SATA Adapter, drive dock, or enclosure to boot the drive externally to bypass the internal cable. If the drive works externally, then most likely you have a bad cable.
If you can install an older version of macOS to an external drive, then run DriveDX from the external drive and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. This will allow me to determine the condition of the drive. If you cannot install an older version of macOS to an external drive, then can provide instructions for creating a bootable Linux USB drive so you can check the health of the hard drive.
You should be able to install Mountain Lion and upgrade from there. If macOS 10.12+ was ever previously installed on this laptop and you want Catalina, then try booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R. Sometimes this will work, but other times it may only give you Mountain Lion as well (I wish Apple would fix these things so they work as intended).
If you have access to another Mac, then you can try downloading and creating a bootable macOS USB installer using these instructions:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
Be aware that the other Mac can only download macOS installers compatible with the hardware being used for the download. Unfortunately Apple doesn't make reinstalling macOS very easy (yes it appears they've done things to make it easy, but there are so many restrictions and broken aspects that it can be a real pain).
There is a slim possibility you could reinstall the original hard drive in the laptop and boot into local recovery mode using Command + R to access the installer for the OS which is on that drive so that you could attach the new SSD externally and install the same version of macOS to the SSD.
Make sure to have frequent & good verified working backups since it is impossible to recover accidentally deleted data from an SSD. Plus an SSD can fail at any time without any warning signs (even a brand new good quality SSD).
Good luck.
Thank you, that’s very helpful. If the SATA cable is failing or failed what would be the symptoms? Would you have a preference for make of drive, Crucial, Seagate etc? Any issues downloading OSX, presumably Catalina. I have the machine running on an external drive running Mountain Lion download by internet recovery, the original OS loaded when new. I could not download Catalina the same way as I got a message saying cannot download because the machine is missing firmware. Seems odd.
Reading your advice and having watched some online videos on changing a hard drive, I am beginning to question if the drive has failed. It is not noisy at all and seems mechanically sound. The sequence of events were I got the grey screen and folder icon with a ? Several hours later I rebooted and it opened as normal, but while trying to move some files it froze and would not reboot again. Command R or Command R & P both lead directly to Internet Recovery and opens Utility. Repair fails. No backup found. Download OSX leads to Mountain Lion (Command R) or Catalina (Command R & P). Neither will load except Mountain Lion to an external disc. Tried multiple other suggestion to no effect, probably done more harm as the internal drive appears to be unmounted and won’t mount. I know it’s hard to say, but is this symptomatic of a failed drive or something else. Naive I know, quite understand if there’s no answer!
Thank you again. Going from bad to worse! It won’t start at all under Command P R. Command R opens to OSX Utilities but the HDD is now not visible in Disc Utility. DirectDX reports for the external drive and doesn’t see the internal HDD. I have ordered the USB to SATA adapter and Crucial MX500 SDD and will take it from there.
Hi HWTech,
I have now obtained a USB -SATA Cable, connected the failed drive and run a DirectX report. Looks terminal!
I have also obtained a Crucial MX500 SSD but not attempted to instal it yet.
The report is attached. Very grateful for any further insights.
Thank you
Thanks for the information, as I thought. Surprising it kept going so long, but I guess the warning signs were there.
I have ordered the internal SATA Cable, hopefully not too tricky to instal, I’ve seen the guide videos so fingers crossed!
I have now formatted the Crucial SSD, GUID partition table and MAC OSX extended (journaled).
From internet Recovery it seems I can only download Mountain Lion .... and presumably I can upgrade from that? Is this the best option or should I try the App Store to download El Capitan, if that’s possible.
Many thanks
Thank you very much for your help which gave me the confidence to get the job done. I now have a working MacBook Pro, with SSD and new SATA CABLE, probably working better than ever! Option, Command R did lead to Catalina but couldn’t download because of missing firmware. Mountain Lion downloaded without problem and I have been able to upgrade to El Capitan. Once again thank you very much.
Regards, David
I’m late to the party but wanted to congratulate you on your repair success. Those unibody MBPs are like tanks! Yours will eventually give out in a way that doesn’t make sense to repair any longer but that could still be several years from now. Happy computing.
Congratulations!
You should be able to install macOS 10.13+ now that you have a properly formatted internal drive. Usually the macOS 10.13+ installers have issues when the internal drive isn't properly erased for use on a Mac. You can download newer versions of macOS from links contained in this Apple article for creating bootable macOS USB installers:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
I would recommend using the USB installer just in case you would encounter the "missing firmware" error again in case this error is different than what I've encountered so it is less likely to affect the ability of your laptop to boot into macOS from an aborted install attempt. Just make sure to have a good verified working backup before attempting to upgrade macOS.
No worries, there’s nothing on the machine to backup as I haven’t been able to recover anything from the failed disc, anyway most recent stuff is on iCloud or my old 2007 iMac.
I’ll try the bootable USB. Very many thanks.
I am happy to say the MacBook Pro is now in good order, now reminding me daily to upgrade from Mojave to Catalina!
I have also tested some data recovery software on the failed disc and will be able to retrieve as much data as I want. I have tried Oboysoft and Disc Drill both of which read the disc. The only problem is the volume of data and how it is presented. It’s photos I’m mostly interested in. Disc Drill seems to mix up all the photos to the point I will never remember where they were taken! No doubt because this is where it finds them on the disc. Oboysoft presents some of them in the folders they were filed which Is easier. Any comments or suggestions on best and easiest means to recover?
Many Thanks
David
Upgrade Mid 2012 13” MacBook Pro to SSD or HDD
