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Hard drive or SATA cable fried?

Hi all,


Let me take you through my day.


This morning, I start up my MacBook Pro, MD101N/A, Mid-2012, to see that there is a beta update (I'm a public beta tester) to add Photos to OS X. I download the update, have breakfast, and come back upstairs to see it is not done installing yet (five more minutes). I'm in a rush so close the computer and take it to work. I open it up at work and the installation finishes in about ten minutes, after which it says the Mac will be optimising for some time and hence performance and battery may be affected. No problem. Works perfectly all day - Safari, Pages - you name it. Pack it up in my backpack, someone bumps in to me (pretty hard) as I walk toward my car. Laptop is closed to hard drive should be asleep - plus metal casing and backpack protection is strong enough?


Get home, fire it up, everything works fine. Open up Safari, Pages and an 1080p video on QuickTime. It freezes while I check what WiFi network I'm on, doesn't respond to anything (including Force Quit keyboard prompt). Force shut down, start back up, and the flashing folder with question mark appears. Open up Apple Hardware Test, no faults (even the longer test). Start it in Safe Mode - no help. Start it in Recovery mode, attempt to go to a Time Machine backup - no destination drive found. Same thing for clean reinstall. Go to Disk Utility; no disk recognised.


One year ago (minus four days) an Apple Store in the Netherlands replaced my SATA cable after I encountered the exact same problem. I will not be able to visit an Apple Store in the next three months as I'm in Kenya.


Can anyone give advice as to what actions to undertake? All files are backed up in my Time Capsule - but I do hope this is software and not hardware.


Cheers in advance.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Mar 4, 2015 8:51 AM

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9 replies

Mar 4, 2015 9:18 AM in response to Wout R

You could try a pram reset. Command/Option/P/R keys at startup for three chimes. The thing is,unless you have SSD drive, your sata drive has an arm on it somewhat like an old record player. So. if you have it in sleep mode and it gets jarred that arm will move.If the drive is not spinning at all It should not hurt it. But if it is spinning it can cause a scratch on the disks inside the drive. Or possible the drive or the cable got jarred loose. Here is a take apart on your MBP. mostly to give you a visual. Then you could check the hard drive and the cable to see if seated also make sure the memory is seated. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Teardown/95 15

Mar 4, 2015 10:15 AM in response to my ginger

Hi, thanks for your answer.


I tried a PRAM reset, to no avail. I also opened her up, unscrewed the hard drive and removed and replaced the SATA cable. Also to no avail. I did see one strange thing. At 90 degrees to the connection Logic board - SATA there is a torn film of plastic, bent double. The rip is clearly visible in this photo I hope. Personally I don't think much of it (improper packaging removal on behalf of the Apple Store or something of the like) but take a look.


User uploaded file


Also, is there any way I can distinguish between an SATA fault and an actual fried hard drive?


Cheers

Mar 4, 2015 11:14 AM in response to Wout R

On you picture going from right to left. the cables are/WIFI/Optical Drive/Hard Drive/ Battery. What you have circled is the cable for the Hard Drive. Sometimes you can have a little extra tape on the connector. I would not use it as a grab point to remove an reseat the cable. You would want to carefully pull the cable loose and make sure there is no separation in it and then reseat it. I cannot see your hard drive in the picture,so I do not know if you have the sata or ssd drive. If it is the sata drive ,do you hear any light clicking noise when you startup? This would mean that you have possible drive damage. If you have a ssd drive (solid state drive) it is not possible to damage the drive by jarring it as there are no moving parts. Make sure all connection cables are fully seated. Include reseating of memory. If in recovery/utilities/disk utilities/ your startup volume does not show, that is problematic.There is single user and SMC reset. after that I do not know what to advise.https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203176

Mar 5, 2015 11:15 PM in response to Wout R

You can rule out the SATA cable by connecting the HD to a USB enclosure.

If you can find one that could allow you to boot if it is only the cable that has died, you may also be able to cannibalise a portable HD case (to fit your SATA HD into it) if you are unable to find a store that sells or ships SATA USB enclosures.


Another option to get up & running would be to install OS X onto a USB flash drive, faster models can work OK so long as you don't bump or unplug them.


You could also try a continuity check on the SATA cable if you were able to rig up a battery, led, bulb or buzzer 🙂 the pins are insanely small, so you would want to use something fine for a probe. 3V & a LED & lots of patience may work.

Mar 9, 2015 8:41 AM in response to Wout R

" I'm in Kenya." "what everyone says about Apple quality, pretty ridiculous in my opinion"

I was a professional photographer and knew a lot of other professionals. I met an assistant cameraman in NYC who was grousing about having to shoot an action flick in the Bahamas. "I'll spend my whole time cleaning sand out of the camera and tightening screws after all the flying (esp helicopters). My assistant was also checking all the screws after long flights due to the amount of high frequency vibration that the cameras were subjected to on these jets.

The cameras in question here are Arriflexes and PanaVision and the sound recorders were Nagras. There is no higher quality.

I agree that the SATA cables in these machines are delicate but the keyboards are also delicate and need to be protected from moisture or even high humidity.

Hard drive or SATA cable fried?

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