Solution to a MacBook Pro 17" Mid-2010 flashing disk icon on reboot

내 문제

When our Macbook Pro had a graphics problem, it took me 1 month of effort arguing, testing, and lobbying to convince Apple Support that my problem on the 17" was the same problem as the 15" that had a World-Wide recall. Little did I know that a Class Action with Nvidia had already established the full extent of their bad graphics card soldering.

Thus, this was not the support road to follow even though I had found that via newsgroups, many SATA disk cable problems were signalling a systematic failure mode among MacBook Pro 17" mid-2009 and 2010 models with another potential Class Action.

So I set about to fix the problem myself.

나의 수리

Well, I started performing the Apple Extended Hardware Test via the Applications DVD. When nothing was found faulty including the disk interface, I proved my SATA disk was OK by purchasing a generally useful "newertech Voyager Q SATA hard drive docking solution". This worked like a gem, so we had an operational MacBook Pro working again until the cable from iFixit arrived.

When the Hard Drive cable arrived, I removed the old one and discovered that the connector had broken away on one side. This could have been caused by poor handling the last time this cable was disconnected - when Apple Support had replaced the Logic Board under extended warranty to resolve the nVidia graphics card problem.

I was very careful and replaced the cable, then the SATA drive and was very pleased when the MacBook Pro booted OK.

The replacement took about 20 minutes.

내 조언

Don't be intimidated, the Macbook Pro mid-2010 was one of the easiest laptops I've ever worked-on. Any tips? Make sure you do a complete diagnostic routine (Apple Extended Hardware Test) before deciding what to do.