Macbook 2013 takes hours to startup

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Level 1

4 points

Macbook 2013 takes hours to startup

I've been trying for days to fix my daughter's MBP she will need to use for virtual school this year. Last school year the MBP stopped working well. I thought it was the hard disk and I replaced it with a solid state and reinstalled High Sierra from scratch. I then upgraded it to Catalina, afterwards it was unusable.

Thinking there was something wrong with the SSD I tried a different one, this time I used internet recovery and reinstalled Mountain Lion, it took all night. The next day I upgraded to Mojave. It took all night. This morning I started to install updates. It's now the evening and they are still not done. I don't understand what could be causing this unit to run so slowly.

Posted on Aug 20, 2021 6:52 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

60,380 points

Aug 27, 2021 8:02 AM in response to Supermig

Apple had a secret free repair program at one time (now expired) where Apple actually would proactively replace the SATA cable whenever the MBPro 13" (mid-2012) model was repaired for any reason even if the laptop exhibited no signs of any drive issues. That has been the only time excluding a safety recall where I have seen Apple replace a part that was not showing any symptoms and was unrelated to the main repair. The symptoms of a bad cable can vary from slowness, to being unable to even power an SSD.

I'm glad the cable resolved the issue so your daughter can do her school work.

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Answer 2

Supermig Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 20, 2021 6:55 PM in response to Supermig

I'm at a booting progress bar for about 3 hours now. It is moving......

Did I mention it is was halfway usable after the Mojave upgrade?

I have reset the bios, taken memory modules out....

Not sure what is left to do.

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Answer 3

HWTech

Level 9

60,380 points

Aug 21, 2021 11:14 AM in response to Supermig

Since you mentioned upgrading to an SSD I'm assuming this laptop used a hard drive previously so the laptop is actually a MacBook Pro 2012 model. If this is the case and you have the 13" model, then most likely the hard drive SATA cable is bad and needs to be replaced. The hard drive SATA cable in the 13" model has an extremely high rate of failure, but it is possible the cable in the 15" is bad as well. You can find a replacement cable from OWC:

https://eshop.macsales.com/search/?q=hard%20drive%20cable&filter.catidpath=3406

Also what is the make and model of the SSDs you are using? Not all SSDs are compatible with certain computers plus many of the consumer level SSDs today are just low end budget economy models that are just as slow as a hard drive. I find the Crucial MX500 series SSD is a good option as it is a good compromise on price & performance. Just stay away from the Crucial BX500 series as it is a low end SSD that is as slow as a hard drive and tends to overheat very easily.

In the future you can get the exact model of your Mac by clicking the Apple menu and selecting "About This Mac" or by entering the serial number here:

https://checkcoverage.apple.com/

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