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3 times of replacement of Hard drive Cable within 2 years

Dear All,

I have been an iFan and loved Apple's products. I have been an owner of 4 iPods, 1 iPhone, 1 iPad and 1 Macbook Pro 13'' (bought at Jan 2010 from US online Apple store).

Unfortunately, it's incredible to say my Macbook Pro Hard Drive Cable required 3 times of replacements within 2 years. The first time of mal-function happen in the warranty period, so Authorized Apple Office replaced it. 6 months later, the bad "symptom" happen again with question mark folder on boot up screen and recovered after replacement of used hard drive cable. Six months later, question mark folder boot screen happen again and disappear after install a good HDD cable from another Macbook Pro.

You may imagine my disappointed to see "periodic" and costly repairs of my Macbook. It's unbeliveable for quality of an Apple product, which should have been better. One time of repair could be explained as "unlucky" or mistake on production line. 3 times within 2 years can not say as sporadic or random mistake. Obviously, there is an systemic problem with Apple HDD cables and I can not sure it would be the last time I have spent money and time to replace a new cable. I worked in Vietnam, where it's not always easy to buy a new spare parts of Apple products.

Honestly, I never seen any of my PC laptops get any wrong on their HDD cable like my poor Macbook.

My case would be a very bad experience for an Macbook user.

Anyone can tell me how to prevent HDD cable from bad situation again?

Thank you very much in advance

Regards

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Jan 24, 2012 12:41 AM

17 replies

Gdragz

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Dec 15, 2015 10:14 AM in response to John Grzeskowiak

Finally some decent helpful replies. Good to know some history from repair shops. I too am sitting here running my 13" MBP from an external enclosure. This must be my 3rd or 4th cable to break. It's getting really frustrating. I am one of those fairly mobile and heavy uses - in common with John's customers experience. My gut feeling is the big temperature fluctuations with heavy use too.

Not sure there is much we can do, except wait for the next one to fail 😕

Feb 6, 2016 4:15 AM in response to Gdragz

I'm currently running this 13" MBP from an external SATA caddy too. It failed for the fourth time this morning. I currently run an SSD from it so it's not the heat of the drive failing as these things are a lot cooler running than traditional hard drives.

It's a 13" mid 2012 Core i5 2.5Ghz Macbook Pro just in case any of you other SATA ribbon cable sufferers want to compare notes. My son's has had to be replaced once and his is the same model as mine. Maybe this model is the worst as my daughters MacBook Pro is an old Core 2 Duo Unibody and hers has never failed. Neither has my wife's which is an early 2011 2.3Ghz Core i5.

This time I am going to order two cables and when it goes again which I am sure it will I will replace it again and sell the MacBook to get an upgrade hopefully.

3 times of replacement of Hard drive Cable within 2 years