SATA cable or motherboard failure?

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Level 1

4 points

SATA cable or motherboard failure?

Hey community,

my old macbook pro 13inch, 2010 mid, 2.4ghz, 250Gb HDD broke down. Tried many different solutions to fix it, but unfortunately there was no other choice then to buy new HDD. So bought the new one, installed, changed it and installed iOS, after using it for couple hours it started to got laggy and had to force shut. After tried to turn it on, there was no HD visible, not even in the recovery mode, tried to plug it in, back and forwards many times, but still gave no results. I can hear it spinning, but it won't recognize.

Is it the sata cable that has to be changed or it is the failure of the motherboard?
Thanks for answers!

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

Posted on Apr 1, 2015 4:28 AM

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Answer 1

dwb

Level 7

32,920 points

Apr 1, 2015 7:03 AM in response to Petras12

Do you have the original DVD that shipped with the computer? If so you can try booting with it. If the computer boots with the DVD it would point to the cable being damaged or loose from the logic board. If you’ve been using TimeMachine with an external hard drive (not a TimeCapsule) and if the TimeMachine drive was plugged into the computer when you upgraded to Mavericks it should have its own recovery partition so you can try restarting the computer with the TM drive connected. This could also help indicate whether it is the logic board or SATA cable. For future reference, this is also one of the reasons I like using a clone backup as a secondary backup drive because I can always boot up with it if the internal drive isn’t functional.

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