Internal hard drive disk not recognized

Hello everyone

the problem is in fact the SATA connector at the tip of the cable. It only makes good contact with some HDDs. the fix! is simple.

put 2 lines of masking tape on top of the DATA side of the HDD connector, then plug in the ribbon cable and turn on the machine. you will get the apple sign if the HDD has OS on it if its empty boot from cd and check on disk utillity.

putting the tape:

instruments: masking tape(blue or white), a small flat screw driver, and scissors.

put a piece of tape on top of the DATA side or if you want it could go accross the DATA AND POWER, NOTE, ON TOP OF THE PLASTIC AREA, DO NOT PUT TAPE ON THE PINS SIDE, I REPEAT DO NOT PUT THE TAPE ON WHERE THE PINS MAKE CONTACT. THE TAPE GOES ON THE UPPER SIDE THAT IS ONLY PLASTIC. cut tape very close to the edge. make the division between DATA AND POWER on the tape and plug into ribbon cable.

ENJOY.

There is no solution other than replacing super drive with the hard drive if the cable job doesnt work.

I bought a super drive to HDD converter caddy from ebay and now its working like a charm.. Only downside: No CD/DVD .. But who cares these days??

Jon,

The tape goes on the hard plastic connector (that connects to the drive) at the end of the cable. You want the tape to reduce the inner space so that it forces the metal pins to make better contact, being careful not to place the tape over the metal pins themselves else you'll have no connection. I basically inserted the end of the tape strip into the thin slot of the connector, than wrapped around a couple of mm onto the outside of the connector.

**BUT** while the trick allowed me to finally see the drive from Disk Utility, I never got it beyond that. In the end I purchased a replacement for the cable and the problem was solved.

B

This is happing all over the place, at least to the 500GB hard drives.

Same thing here, I can't see the drive in the utility tray, i put it in my other older (2008) macbook 15 it worked and I formated it in 1 minute. when I put it back in the macbook 13 (2009) it didn't work.

Frustrating to say the least, way to screw things Apple ;)

Hello people!

Effectively, it was the cable. After trying everything I could, even buying a new HD, I founded this article and went to the Apple distributor here in Barcelona looking for the cable.

This time luck was on my side and yes I got the cable. Now Im back in track!

Thanks for the posts!

Umberto

I tried Jose's trick. It was good enough to show the drive from Disk Utility (starting from the install DVD). Which is better than before when it was not even showing the drive. But that's about it, I couldn't get to boot up.

I then ordered the SATA cable (as described above in this thread) installed it, and voila, the MacBook Pro is up and running again.

i had the same problem tried everything. MAKE SURE THE HARDDRIVE CABLE CLIPS IN!!!! on the video i watched to replace it, it showed the cable just sat not clipped. i got a new cable and clipped it in as my old one was not clipped in. its bloody works!!!!1 ohhh raaaaa

Hi tried the tape job, which didnt help.. then ordered the cable, which also didnt help. The HDD is not spinning at all. I thought its the cable again, which led me to order another cable. IT didnt work either. I belive there is some problem with the logic board.. Any lights??

johnsonkoikal same to me.

I tried another cable, put it in, it worked just for one single time, I've seen the system previously installed. After the first reboot, no more connection.

It's the third cable.

It is possible that the logic board crushes every cable I put it in?

I had these issues on two occasions for 13” Macbook Pros from 2012. After hours of reinstalling and re-corrupting the MacOS on a new SSD I was installing, I ordered a new SATA cable. The most recent time, the new cable did not fix the problem. I then read about SSDs not tolerating erroneous data sent along SATA cables very well, with the suggestion that the cable would produce data errors because of it rubbing against the aluminum case. The instruction was to insulated the cable from rubbing against the aluminum case by putting a few strips of electrical tape beneath the cable, on the case where the flat SATA cables run. I did that and then suddenly the new cable worked, and no more corruption of my installations. I never did throw the old cable back in to test if the tape was a singular fix (I was just happy to see the SSD show up in Recovery again), but I sure kept the potentially-fine cable for a future fix.

TL;DR - Make sure you put an insulated barrier between the aluminum surface and your SATA cable; electric tapes works fine!

I had the same problem. Drive would not boot up correctly, i could reformat and reinstall snow leopard but when i would try to reboot, nothing. I bought a new hard drive and it didn't work either. After taking everything to the Apple Store, they said that lots of the macbook pros from 2009, the hard drive cable/ribbon were just going bad and they replaced the cable for free.

Different thing are happening to different people here.

I wanted to replace the 500GB SATA hard drive in my MacBook Pro with a 750GB disk. I hooked the 750GB up to the MacBook through an external USB - SATA interface. Formatted the 750GB disk, did a clean install of Mavericks and moved a bunch of my stuff across from the 500GB.

Could happily boot up the new system on the 750GB disk while attached to the USB - SATA interface.

Time came to swap the disks over - ie put the 750 inside the MacBook and take the 500GB out. No joy - would not boot - got the flashing Folder with question mark. Read all the stuff in here about new cables etc . Got a new cable - same problem.

Turned out to be formatting of the disk. Showed up as having one small partition when installed internally - doesn't seem to cause any problems when connected externally. Have reformatted the disk as MacOS extended journaled, 1 partition - disk now recognised. Cost me £20 for the cable and a lot of wasted time reinstalling the system all over again etc etc. But heh ho - stuff happens.

Anyone want a brand new cable......?!

Great explanation of the problem in this video, and solution for fixing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amg5w0rl...

hi,

this wonder like a charm. Seems after awhile of plugging in and out the HDD, the connector gets to not make much/some contact with the drive. and yes the tape goes TO THE UPPER PLASTIC SIDE (Just slide the tape in secure it in place with a flat screwdriver) and bam. HDD back on. This issue has been a headache for me ( Do repairs for a living) and bought a cables for the same mac but didn't have any results till i id this as explained above. highly appreciated. saved me a client.

Keep repairing!:)

hi, i want to replace my hdd internal by a sshd as internal drive but my mac book pro mid 2010

doesn't show the sshd when i try to load the os but it see the hdd .

please help me.

This is what worked for me i first reset the SMC by unplugging the macbook from the power adapter and i held down Shift/CTRL/OPTION/ AND THE POWER BUTTON DOWN for 10 seconds simultaneously, then let them go at the same time. (Nothing visual will happen) Then I plugged in the power cable and reset the PRAM by pressing the power button and immediately after pressing the power button hold down the command/option/ p/r keys untill you hear the second chime and let go. Worked for me!!!!!!!!!!!

I am back in the RACE

Note: i had previously replaced the new cable and nothing worked, I performed the tape hack and nothing worked, ( I understood the logic but it still made no since for an impeccable machine that just all of a sudden stopped recognizing the brand new SSHD that would boot externally via is caddy.....you know?)

The last thing I had done was connected my macbook to my big screen tv via mini display port to display port/hdmi/dvi adapter by gigaware. Maybe that messed up my settings or something.

But I am fine now hope this helps someone...

'''Fine job, my son. "Sharing and explaining", could be Potus' right hand man, when it comes to dealing with people and all the systems affected. You show them, Clems..

I tried everything in this thread without success, but did finally get things working. Here is a summary of my situation:

• Early 2008 Macbook Pro (MacbookPro4,1)
• Was dropped and no longer booted
• Opened it up, disconnected and reconnected everything, no luck
• Purchased new SSD thinking it was a damaged drive (it was not)
• Plugged in new SSD, tried booting while holding Option, drive was not detected

(In between these steps I did countless SMC and NVRAM resets, checked connections, did the tape trick, blew off dust, etc)

At this point I assumed I had a broken hard drive cable. As one last ditch effort, I tried plugging in the old thought-to-be-damaged hard drive into into an external USB SATA dock. To my surprise it was detected by the OS when doing an "Option" boot and I was able to load OS X. From there the OS could see the internal SSD drive I had installed. I formatted the disk (Mac OS Journaled, GUID partition table), downloaded El Captain (newest version that supports that model MBP), and installed it on the internal drive. From there things went smoothly and I now have a working laptop again.

Like I mentioned before, I tried _many_ different things from this thread and others so it's hard to say what exactly got things working again. Hope this helps!

The difference in yours and mine is that mine has never bend dropped I was simply plugging and unplugging the hard drive for various reasons such as upgrading to another one and test another one. Yours was physically dropped which can lead to other complications.

I had same issue, replaced hard drive cable & i’m back in business! Thanks everyone!

Hey guys,

I have a Macbook Pro late 2011. I had replaced the hard drive and the cable and I still could not figure out why it is not working. I also had restarted SMC so I thought the problem was with the logic board. But, after reading thread I realized that I needed to restart nvram as well. I still don’t know if my old hdd/cable would work or not. Anyway, thanks for such a great thread.

PS: This was a helpful link btw on how to reset nvram and SMC.

https://iosafe.com/helpdesk/kb/faq.php?i...

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Update:

I still have problems. After I restart nvram, it recognizes the hard drive, but after 5 minutes, it forgets it. Any clues why?