An very unique situation with my MacBook Pro - IR cable, Logic, SSD

[shotkeeper]

Hey guys, so my MacBook Pro unibody 2012 13'' was working perfectly just one day ago. I have had an new SSD drive for 2 months now, worked perfect. Also installed 8 GB RAM also worked nice for 3-4 days. Then suddenly yesterday everything crashed and at booth I got an panic (CPU 2 caller) & it keeps rebooting & refreshing in a cycle(I attached a photo).

Nothing was responsive, the recovery cmd -R etc was very buggy. I tried booting my SSD external with an SATA USB adapter, but still very slow and didn't booth.

I then used my brothers macbook to connect my SSD with the same SATA USB adapter and it worked perfectly. I could also use as a startup device and everything worked perfectly (thank God my data was intact). So I ruled out that my SSD was the troubleshooter. ..

After some EHBO repairing, I managed to get my macbook recognize my SSD external with the SATA usb (which I am using now). However when I put my SSD back in internal to SATA, it get's recognized and boothes up, but not everything is working perfectly: spotlight doesn't search, apps crash, very slow.

So this is the strange situation I haven't encountered yet online. My SSD works with USB SATA, and with internal SATA it also booths but has a lot error, it's not working normally.

I found on the internet possible troubleshooters:

- Third party RAM. However when I install my old MAC ram I still get the harddrive error.

- bad SATA cable - pretty common - however people with bad cables couldn't get their macbook to recognize the internal HDD/SSD or not boot it. However mine boots and even starts Sierra, but everything is working weirdly. Spotlight doesn't find anything, google drive gives me an error, very slow.

- It could be my LOGIC board, but I read that if USB SATA works your logic board is probably fine.

The only thing I can think of is that my SATA cable is partly? damaged, but I cannot see how it manages to booth my SSD internally overtime & recognize it.

 

[BrianBaughn]

From what you've posted I'd say your guess is the best one...SATA cable. For under $20, it's worth a shot.

 

[topgunn]

The SATA cable on your model is very prone to failure. Specifically where the cable bends over the aluminum strut into the HDD/SSD cavity. Over time, the cable rubbing against the aluminum frame will expose the underlying conductors in the cable causing shorts. Now, shorts can cause an all our failure or they can just cause odd kernel panics, slow transfer speeds, or really anything. You may not see the problem for weeks or months only to see it reappear unexpectedly.

Occasionally, I have been able to fix the problem with a piece of electrical tape on the underside of the cable where it would rub, but I would say I have had less than a 20% success rate with this. On another occasion, I had an adapter to add a second hard drive to the MBP in place of the optical drive and I just abandoned the primary hard drive slot. Most often, I replace the cable. On a new cable, I always put electrical tape on the underside of the cable to make it less likely to suffer this failure in future.

Background: I manage a fleet of 150 or so Macs for a non-profit which means I am often looking for the most cost effective solutions.

 

[Fishrrman]

It's the SATA ribbon cable. This is a common problem in 2012-design non-retina MacBook Pros.
Replace it.
You can either do this yourself or have Apple do it.
For a while this was a FREE REPLACEMENT from Apple (due to the high failure rates). Not sure if they're still offering this. But ask before you do it yourself.

If you're going to change it yourself, go to ifixit.com to see what's involved (if you've changed the drive yourself, you already know what to do).
The cable part number is at ifixit.
You can buy it from them, or online.

The fact that the drive works normally when connected via USB, but DOESN'T work on the ribbon cable -- points right to the cable.