Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Hard Disk Drive Replacement Options

Hi:

I have a 2009 MacBook Pro. Recently it started acting funny and a friend suggested it might be the hard drive. I got a copy of Scannerz to check the drive and about 10 minutes into the scan it started finding problems. I ran Scannerz in diag mode to confirm it wasn't the SATA cable, and it passed that with flying colors. I need a new hard drive.

Here's my dilemma: I'm on a budget. The most I can afford is between $125 to $150 to replace the hard drive. The question is, can I get a decent SSD for this much money?

Before I continue, I should state that I use a dual boot system. I still have a 100GB partition with Snow Leopard on it because I have some old applications that are older PPC applications. They're rarely used, but they do get used a few times a year. The rest of the drive is Mavericks.

I see the following as possible options:

1. Get an SSD that I can split so that I have 2 partitions again. It would need to be at least 256GB, and that's probably pushing it, probably more like 350GB is what I'd like.

2. Just get a hard drive. I've read on here that some of the Hitachi drives are fast for old mechanical drives and they're cheap too. I'd have money left over.

3. Create a Fusion drive with a smallish SSD and a hard drive. Setting it up using an article I read about in CNET doesn't look that hard, but the idea of taking out the optical drive and putting some type of adapter in there to hold either an SSD or HDD just seems a little risky. Also, isn't the speed of the optical drive slower than those of drives? Do I need a new cable if I consider doing this?

4. The Scannerz tech support people said I might want to get a new SATA cable anyway. Any idea why they would say that? They don't sell parts so that obviously wasn't the motivation.

When answering, please keep costs in mind. The total I'm will to spend, absolute max, is $150.

Thank you.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), Hard Drive Replacement

Posted on Feb 17, 2015 5:42 PM

117 replies

ZV137

Level 1

54 points

Jan 23, 2016 12:33 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

ThomasB2010-

When you ERASE a drive over 2.2TB in ain Internal Drive bay, it is given the Logical Volume stuff in Mac OS X 10.8.3 and later. Many readers here considered that a BUG. Logical Volume Group partitions were not needed, and interfered with re-ERASE and other functions. There are several wildly different work arounds:

• Re-ERASE in an external enclosure, provided yours can accommodate drives over 2.2TB (really old ones can not).

• Re-ERASE using Mac OS X or Recovery_HD or Installer the predates 10.8.3

• Manually delete the Logical Volume group partitions using Terminal.

Do you have any idea what the "logic" behind this is? IMHO forcing a 2.2TB drive to be CS IS a bug.

Jan 23, 2016 12:55 PM in response to ZV137

Logical Volume Group makes FileVault-2 encryption and Fusion Drive setup easy.

Apple has not chosen to fix it since 10.8.3, regardless of whether they consider it a bug or not.

The only changes in this area are the ElCapitan version of Disk Utility that has been lobotomized (although the underlying features in Terminal have not been removed).

The only Macs affected are the Mac Pro silver tower models 2009, 2010, and 2012.

Jan 23, 2016 6:50 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

...The only changes in this area are the ElCapitan version of Disk Utility that has been lobotomized...

You can say that again!!!!

ZV137

Level 1

54 points

Jan 25, 2016 11:40 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks for the info. I think I'm going to have to play with Disk Utility on El Capitan with both Core Storage and "regular" drives to fully understand the short comings. Currently all my drives are HFS standard drives, but when fooling around with Core Storage I did find it a little frustrating to deal with.

Fred1956

Level 1

10 points

Jan 29, 2016 11:53 AM in response to R.K.Orion

Am I missing something, or has SMART data that used to be on the "i" button (info) in Disk Utility under Yosemite through Lion (I think) now replaced with just other drive info and the word "verified". Is there some trick key sequence you can use to get that information back?

I wish they would quit removing useful stuff from the OS.

Csound1

Level 9

60,009 points

Jan 29, 2016 12:42 PM in response to Fred1956

It's still there, that is what is 'verified'

Jan 29, 2016 1:40 PM in response to Fred1956

If you were seeing 'number of errors' there, you were using another Utility.

Disk Utility has always just reported "Verified"

ZV137

Level 1

54 points

Jan 29, 2016 9:06 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I think he's referring to this type of output:

Partition Map Scheme :

GUID Partition Table

Disk Identifier :

disk0

Media Name :

HGST HTS725050A7E630 Media

Media Type :

Generic

Connection Bus :

SATA

Device Tree :

IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/SATA@B/PRT0@0/PMP@0

Writable :

Yes

Ejectable :

Location :

Internal

Total Capacity :

500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 Bytes)

Disk Number :

Partition Number :

S.M.A.R.T. Status :

Verified

Raw Read Error Rate :

000000000000

Spinup Time :

001200000001

Start/Stop Count :

00000000075C

Reallocated Sector Count :

000000000000

Seek Error Rate :

000000000000

Seek Time Performance :

000000000000

Power-On Hours :

0000000021F4

Spinup Retries :

000000000000

Power Cycles :

0000000006F5

Shock Sense Count :

000000000000

Power Off Retract Count :

00000002006D

Load/Unload Cycles :

0000001BA899

HDD Temperature :

002C000F0021

Reallocation Event Count :

000000000000

Current Pending Sector Count :

000000000000

Off-Line Scan Uncorrectable Sector Count

000000000000

UltraDMA CRC Errors :

000000000000

Loaded Retries :

000000000000

I'm on Mountain Lion right now and that was obtained by starting Disk Utility, clicking on a Primary internal drive, then clicking on the blue "i" info button. I know this works on Mountain Lion, Yosemite, and Mavericks, and I think it first appeared in Lion. It will not display that if the selected item in Disk Utility is a volume, and I don't think it will appear if the drive has Core Storage on it. Apparently this information is now not available on El Capitan, but I haven't tested it.

Jan 30, 2016 7:49 AM in response to ZV137

In ElCapitan, the display ends at the Verified line:

Jan 30, 2016 12:02 PM in response to ZV137

It definitely does not work on El Capitan. It definitely does work on Yosemite. On El Capitan I thought maybe they had a hidden key combo, like control-click on the info button so I tried a few key combos, but all I get is the same limited info like Grant is showing above.

Feb 2, 2016 12:08 PM in response to R.K.Orion

The information was probably dropped because it's not needed by many people. Some points:

The Disk Utility output of SMART data is in hex, and most people probably think it looks like gibberish. How many people even know how to do hex conversions?
SMART status isn't that reliable.
It's not uncommon for a hard drive to periodically and successfully re-map bad or marginal sectors if whatever caused the damage isn't catastrophic. It's completely normal for an SSD to start remapping bad or failing blocks to get "spares."
It's inconsistent. Why would an internal hard drive with SATA and non-core storage be allowed to show it and core storage and external drives won't?

Having seen a number of drives fail with SMART indicating nothing is wrong, and a few others getting messages that a drive needs to be replaced because it's in imminent danger but end up lasting for years tells me that technology is far less than perfect....so why imbed it's output in Disk Utility? I can just see a bunch of people flocking to their local Apple Store and demanding a refund because their SSD just remapped a few blocks and they don't know enough to realize that it's really normal behavior.

CaptH

Level 1

59 points

Feb 3, 2016 11:53 AM in response to R.K.Orion

RAID support is now gone from Disk Utility, or if it's there, I can't find it.

Feb 5, 2016 11:43 AM in response to CaptH

Last night when using El Capitan, I wanted to format a Time Machine volume. No big deal. Disk Utility took almost four minutes to load. Log files showed no problems whatsoever. The drives were fine. This sort of trend, i.e. weird behavior, seems to be the new normal.

Feb 6, 2016 2:15 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

This is really a response to everyone. I'm fooling with reconfiguring (yet again) my multi-boot system with an SSD and an HDD. SMART parameters as shown above can be obtained via the "info" button on some drives, but not all. I have at my disposal an HGST 500GB 2.5" HD, a Fujitsu 160GB 2.5" HD, and a SanDisk 240GB SSD. The SMART parameters can be read via Disk Utility on the HDDs if directly connected to a SATA port on OS X versions , but the SSD reports the generic stuff with a SMART status of "verified" and that's it. The more detailed SMART status will be reported on Mountain Lion through Yosemite on the HDDs but El Capitan will only report the basic stuff on everything, regardless of the media being used as the boot media.

It seems that whether or not Disk Utility reports the more detailed SMART status is dependent on the drive. Whether El Capitan can report any of it at all remains a mystery.

Just thought I'd share that for anyone reading this thread, since the issue is somewhat confusing and seemingly inconsistent.

Feb 8, 2016 11:20 AM in response to R.K.Orion

R.K.Orion wrote:

This is really a response to everyone. I'm fooling with reconfiguring (yet again) my multi-boot system with an SSD and an HDD. SMART parameters as shown above can be obtained via the "info" button on some drives, but not all. I have at my disposal an HGST 500GB 2.5" HD, a Fujitsu 160GB 2.5" HD, and a SanDisk 240GB SSD. The SMART parameters can be read via Disk Utility on the HDDs if directly connected to a SATA port on OS X versions , but the SSD reports the generic stuff with a SMART status of "verified" and that's it. The more detailed SMART status will be reported on Mountain Lion through Yosemite on the HDDs but El Capitan will only report the basic stuff on everything, regardless of the media being used as the boot media.

It seems that whether or not Disk Utility reports the more detailed SMART status is dependent on the drive. Whether El Capitan can report any of it at all remains a mystery.

Just thought I'd share that for anyone reading this thread, since the issue is somewhat confusing and seemingly inconsistent.

That explains some of the discrepancies people are seeing.

Hard Disk Drive Replacement Options