Hard drive not recognized - cable?

If the drive boots from USB, then it's probably the hard drive cable. I've replaced the one in my Macbook twice now. I have no idea what's wrong with it. The thing sits in the Macbook and is glued down in places. No amount of fiddling with it will get it to come back to life. The only fix is to buy a new cable. There's obviously something wrong with the design, but I've not seen a word about it from Apple.

I join the group.

13" MBP mid-2012 here.
Bought originally on August 2012. Got a new one as a replacement in September 2013 after a lot pr problems that ended up in months of troubles (not related with the disk anyway).

And now.. not even 6 months after (so 6 months of life of this machine.. although i have to admit I use it almost 24h sometimes ) run into the magic folder with question mark and figured out my SSD is perfectly working (connected now via USB) and found this discussion to confirm my suspects of a cable problem (well, either the cable or the motherboard).

After seeing how common this problem is I'm even more ****** off than before.I'm still under warranty (in Europe at least they are forced to offer 2 years) but very far from any assistance as I live on a remote island... not sure what to do now, probably I'll just try to find a cheap cable (any help?) and fix it myself. Then sell it and buy a **** PC and installing Ubuntu on it.

F**K APPLE. You've just lost a 10+ years customer.

It's pretty easy to change the cable, and they are easily obtainable on ebay There are also lots of instructions on the web, although just remove the screws at the back. You can see where the cable goes. There is a tricky bit getting the glue off the the IR sensor, but if you're carefull all will be OK. Make sure you don't dislodge the keyboard backlighting cable when you put it back together. If you do, it's no big deal putting it back in again.

Good luck

Note to Apple: Why don't you fix this properly? It's obviously a common problem, and it's hard to see how it could be the user's fault.

At least 3 generations of MBP has this problem (mine is 2009's). Apple screwed up, but they just don't give a f*ck 😠

S.Armodin,

Actually the problem is more prevalent on the 2009 models than on any others. I don't know why but we see more folks with SATA cable problems on 2009 models than on any other machines. I have no idea why the cables fail but the faulty cables really show themselves when upgrading from a HDD to a SSD.

Just the way it is - luckily it's an inexpensive fix, no matter how irritating!

Clinton

I've paid 50$ for Apple service when my first cable died. It worked for 1 or 2 weeks. Than I've made an order from Ebay for the new one. It was chaper, but I had to wait for 3.5 weeks for delivery in Russia.

It's really not an inexpensive fix, because the cable doesn't work for even 6-7 months and when it dies - it takes my time to fix it, so I can't do my job. My time is no inexpensive.

It is not so inexpensive for people in europe guys... ordering from the US takes some extra costs, and a lot of time in which I'll have to use my MBP as a desktop computer as I can only use it with the SSD mounted externally.

Actually to be honest by playing a bit with the cable I manage to have everything fine for a while... 1h or so.. then the problem comes back.. so I'm quite sure it's the cable, but I'm mad. Unfrtunately I can't go to an apple center.. I would demand to have it fixed for free and immediately.

I'll call apple anyway a soon as I can.. I'm curious what they'll say. I won't let it gp like that... it's the second time in 18 months I have troubles with a 1500 euros machine..... I can't believe it. I'm very sorry because I like the operative system, but I'll just abandon apple after this.

Had to wait almost 2 weeks for a cable to be shipped from Latvia... but in the end it worked. I mounted it in a few minutes (although I was a bit afraid for the sensor) and it worked immediately. So, another case of bad cable. Just hope this will last long.

Actually I'm thinking one thing: would it be possible that this problem happened because I have mounted an optibay? In the end the flat cable is in contact with it.. and the optibay tends to heat up.... might be this a possible cause?

Any other of you with an optibay?

And who got this problem without having the optibay?

Hello everybody , so I have the same issue , I have an MacBook Pro 13" mid 2012 , my story goes like this : I have this macbook for about 7 months , about 4 month ago I added an SSD (intel 320 , 160GB) and changed the DVD with my 500GB HDD , all worked fine for about 2 weeks ,after this time my SSD started to disconnect ,the system was halted buy no errors or problems were discovered after a cold restart . For another week there were no problems but after this time more frequent cases of disconnect appeared . The I thought the SSD had a problem , I opened the back of macbook pro , but I was very nervous (and I let the battery connected ) , I disconnected the SSD took it out , put it in an external usb and booted the system , no problem , everything worked fine , I didn't know what to think about this problem , so I decided to connect back the SSD maybe it will work . In the moment I was prepared to connect the SSD , I dropped the SSD over the logic board and I broke an integrated chip and there were some sparks and a little smoke , right next to the connector of macbook monitor . So this was around 3 A.M. in the morning , I know how to handle PCs and laptop PCs but ... this was something else . Anyway I took it to a company specialized in apple repairs , and give about 170Euros , all working fine , I selled the 500GB hdd and put he DVD bay back , all worked fine for about 2 weeks ago , when the disconnecting of SSD were very often , now it doesn't start from internal SSD so the only option is to replace the HDD cable , I started reading about Macbook Pros 13" problems and also find this one which happend very often . I am from Romania were the average wage is around 190Euros and this laptop costs about 750Euros so , it's not like changing it every day .So this was my story ... the same like yours with a lot of stress.

It's amazing how many folk out there have had this problem. But really do the people at Apple ever follow up on certain faults or ever admit that some parts are faulty? No doubt they just expect us to buy the next model that may have been updated. There is never any recalls unlike the Motor industry, just sillence and hoping it will go away! Sad!

I had a post removed because it was 'non constructive". So, I will be as absolutely constructive as I can be:

If you have this problem, there are no options for you but to order the cable online from a third party vendor ($20-$50US) and install it yourself, or go to a genius bar/Apple/Apple approved repair location, and have it replaced. If you have it happen again. You have to do the same thing. And again, and again, costing you anywhere from $50US-~$200US each time. This should be unacceptable to the thousands of people afflicted with this issue.

Hi Clinton. I see you are a Level 7 contributor with 26130 points, which must mean that you know quite a lot about Apple products, and have been very helpful on this site. Do you by chance work for Apple?

My Macbook is indeed a 2009 model, and it does have an SSD, although the reason it has an SSD is that in trying to fix the problem, I immediately suspected the rotating hard disk, which in fact was actually OK - but I didn't know that until I had replaced the disk, (with an SSD) reinstalled the OS, and was in the process of trying to recover any data that might have been recoverable, when I discovered that it would boot from USB, which meant that whatever was wrong, was not the disk. I was relieved that it was the cable and not the SATA controller chip.

The point I'm trying to make here, is that it's not just a problem when you install an SSD, it affects rotating hard drives too.

I assume that all or most of the 2009 models are similarly affected, but that there is no easy fix, otherwise, I'm sure it would have been fixed by now. If there is no easy fix, then the options for Apple are beginning to sound pretty expensive, which I guess explains the silence.

Now that I'm on to it, having to fix the cable occasionally is a small price to pay for a brilliant laptop that is now 5 years old, and gets used every day. Once I realised that the cable was a 'consumable' I ordered a few of them, and am fully prepared for the next time the cable stops working.

Nevertheless, the techie that lurks inside me would love to know what is actually wrong with the cable. Is it mechanical - i.e. a broken wire? Is it something to do with the active components associated with the IR and flashing LED? Is it something else that destroys the cable? Does the cable deteriorate with time/usage?

Come on Apple, throw us a bone!

Do you by chance work for Apple?

Ha! No way - I've just been an Apple user since 1978 and a Mac user since 1987... and I'm by no means the brightest bulb on the tree around here!

I'm not enough of an engineer to know exactly why the SATA cables fail at such an alarming rate (particularly on the 2009 models, although we've seen the problems even with the mid-2012 models, too). I suspect that it has something to do with the wiring iteself, however - sometimes enough bandwidth for a HDD but not a SSD, sometimes even failing on a HDD (but that's seldom). Overly flexed and stressed wiring, perhaps? I simply don't know. A bad SATA cable is like **** - I know it when I see it!

Clinton

P.S. I do still know some Apple engineers - maybe if I ask the right one I can get a better answer!

Hi Clinton,

It would be interesting to find out what Apple knows about this problem. I had not realised that it affected other Macbooks, and have certainly not seen it on our Macbook Air, or our 2007 Macbook.

My guess is though, that they will be a bit tight-lipped, because they won't want to create any evidence in case the issue raised in Slakefistcrunch's 'non-constructive' post get's up. (highly unlikely in my view - those who know about this can't be bothered, and those that don't know, don't know)

What would be helpful, though, would be some comment from Apple about whether there is anything we can do about this. If it's mechanical, should we be putting more glue under the cable, or should we just resign ourselves to that old maxim **** happens, and just live with it.

I must say that personally, I'm going to keep my ancient Macbook running for as long as possible, because my eyesight is so bad now that I wouldn't appreciate a retina screen, and I'm not blown away by the idea that my next Macbook will be largely unfixable because they glued it together.

Denis

I also have a mid-2009 MBP 13 inch. I started getting the blinking question mark about a month ago, and when I brought it to the Genius Bar, I was told of a SMART HDD failure and would need a new one. When I told the guy I had already bought an WD because about a year ago they wanted to charge me ~$200 for a new one when they retail for around $50. I did it myself, and he said that they could no longer service it for me, which is fine by me.

Anyway, I RMA'ed the HDD and when the new one came in I was able to get the computer to start the OS installation (hold down C when the OS disk was in), but when it came time to pick the location for the installation, the HDD was not recognized, I searched around and found the cable problem, and also tried the new HDD in my recent gaming rig, and it was recognized.

I made an appointment with the genius bar today just to have them run the diagnostic, and the lady said it was probably the cable. She gave me the price of over $60 and said she could not just sell me the part, so I just started checking ebay/amazon for my cheapest prices. Hopefully it is the cable, and not the logic board like she mentioned would be what she tried if the cable didn't work. That would have been over ~300 to have her try the cable and then logic board.

I'm never going to know if I sent back my HDD (and lost all my information, as I also have a corrupted flash drive and can't access) when it was working fine and the cable was broken all along. Hopefully the cable works, as if thats not the problem, the laptop will be put out of commission.