Hi, all! This morning, when I went to boot up my Macbook Pro, I was greeted with the dreaded flashing folder with a question mark. I've dealt with this issue previously; however, installing a Samsung 850 SSD seemed to fix the issue. I tried the drive in another computer, and it works perfectly. The MacBook, however, is completely non-responsive to command-r, so I can't even search for a bootable drive. Any/ all thoughts are greatly appreciated!
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2009 MacBook Pro Issue: Flashing Folder with Question Mark on startup, new SSD
- Thread starter pollenonthebreeze
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It is possible that when you replaced your drive with an SSD, you did not create a recovery partition.
You could try booting while holding down the option key to bring up the bootpicker to see if two partitions are shown. I suspect that won't work, though, if booting with command-r won't.
Do you have a second Mac that you can use to access the first Mac's drive using Target Disk Mode?
You could try booting while holding down the option key to bring up the bootpicker to see if two partitions are shown. I suspect that won't work, though, if booting with command-r won't.
Do you have a second Mac that you can use to access the first Mac's drive using Target Disk Mode?
Since the SSD works fine in another computer, I would then suspect a problem with the internal drive cable in your MBP.
I agree with this assessment. I've seen this same problem numerous times and it's usually a defective SATA cable that goes between the HHD or SSD and the logic board. This particular cable is fragile and after time gets brittle from the heat and fails.