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MBP won't see any hard drive

I

inogenius

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 11, 2009
6
0
I'm having a problem that I can't figure out. Thursday my Macbook locked up and despite my best efforts I couldn't kill the task or get it to recover so I just powered it down. When I went to boot it up again, it just hung at the gray apple screen. Based off suggestions, I booted into single user mode and ran an fsck. Each time it came back with the drive could not be repaired. I was surprised that I hadn't noticed any critical errors prior to this, but I figured it happens.

Saturday I went out and bought a new Intel X25-M SSD, which is an upgrade from the old Seagate 320GB 7200 hard drive I was using. First try, it wouldn't detect the hard drive, even in disk utility. Downloaded the firmware tools from Intel and it wouldn't detect the hard drive there either. Figured I was having some serious bad luck, so I took it back and go another. Same thing. So I decided I was going to try a Western Digital 320GB hard drive I had from an old Playstation 3. No luck. It is powering them, as I can feel the WD spinning, but it's not seeing them in disk utility at all.

If I put the old Seagate Hard drive in, it will see that, but I'm determined to get this SSD in there now. Any thoughts on what the problem could be?
 
inogenius said:
I'm having a problem that I can't figure out. Thursday my Macbook locked up and despite my best efforts I couldn't kill the task or get it to recover so I just powered it down. When I went to boot it up again, it just hung at the gray apple screen. Based off suggestions, I booted into single user mode and ran an fsck. Each time it came back with the drive could not be repaired. I was surprised that I hadn't noticed any critical errors prior to this, but I figured it happens.

Saturday I went out and bought a new Intel X25-M SSD, which is an upgrade from the old Seagate 320GB 7200 hard drive I was using. First try, it wouldn't detect the hard drive, even in disk utility. Downloaded the firmware tools from Intel and it wouldn't detect the hard drive there either. Figured I was having some serious bad luck, so I took it back and go another. Same thing. So I decided I was going to try a Western Digital 320GB hard drive I had from an old Playstation 3. No luck. It is powering them, as I can feel the WD spinning, but it's not seeing them in disk utility at all.

If I put the old Seagate Hard drive in, it will see that, but I'm determined to get this SSD in there now. Any thoughts on what the problem could be?
Click to expand...

did you format your new Hard drive?
 
"If I could get the laptop to ever see it, I would. I can't get it to see anything, even in disk utility other than the old hard drive."

Suggestion:
Get yourself one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0
(Note: various items shown)

It's a "SATA docking station". Just plug it into the USB port, stick a "bare drive" into it, and you can then access that drive -- exactly as you'd mount and access an "external drive" in a case.

With this, you can now initialize and prepare a "bare drive" _before_ you put it into the laptop.

You can also use it to back up the laptop to another "bare drive" (just think of it as an external drive without a case).

It also will become a very handy device to have around.

Here's one that is nearly identical to mine:
http://dealmac.com/Agestar-USB-SATA-Hard-Drive-Dock-for-17-free-shipping/391175.html
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Exactly this happened to my WD external. Solution was to use a Windows based computer to do the firmware updates and such. You could give that a try...
 
Put your Mac OS disk in the the Drive and boot with that.

It gives you access to the Disk Utility so you can format the drive.

Edit: Nevermind I am an idiot. Saw your post about Disk Utility.
 
Hisdem said:
Exactly this happened to my WD external. Solution was to use a Windows based computer to do the firmware updates and such. You could give that a try...
Click to expand...
Thanks. I'll give that a try.

If not, I'll have to buy one of the external cases.
 
Fishrrman said:
"If I could get the laptop to ever see it, I would. I can't get it to see anything, even in disk utility other than the old hard drive."

Suggestion:
Get yourself one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0
(Note: various items shown)

It's a "SATA docking station". Just plug it into the USB port, stick a "bare drive" into it, and you can then access that drive -- exactly as you'd mount and access an "external drive" in a case.

With this, you can now initialize and prepare a "bare drive" _before_ you put it into the laptop.

You can also use it to back up the laptop to another "bare drive" (just think of it as an external drive without a case).

It also will become a very handy device to have around.

Here's one that is nearly identical to mine:
http://dealmac.com/Agestar-USB-SATA-Hard-Drive-Dock-for-17-free-shipping/391175.html
Click to expand...
Just as an update, this was the only way I was finally able to get it to work.

Thanks for the help!
 
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