I had an Apple "Genius" swap a hard drive from a MacBook 13" to a MacBook Pro 13". When I got it back, the hard drive was unreadable. The "Genius" said that he did nothing wrong and the problem was that the Hitachi hard drive from the MacBook was incompatible with the new MacBook Pro. My original MacBook was purchased in May 2009 and exchanged for the MacBook Pro in July 2009. When I booted the MacBook Pro from the installer disk, and launched Disk Utilities, my internal hard drive was blank/unformatted. How could the Genius destroy my hard drive just by swapping from one MacBook to another? I guess that he erased my hard drive by accident. What do you think?
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Crashed hard drive during swap
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He didn't damage the HD. Your HD simply isn't in the machine. You can't "unformat" a hard drive, only reformat. 
Don't think you will be getting the old one back for your data, so I hoped you backed it up.
He is also correct, a HD intended for one model of Mac won't work properly in another, but it should at least recognize something is on the hard drive. Usually you should be able to boot into it as well, so long as the OS is updated to the latest version.
Don't think you will be getting the old one back for your data, so I hoped you backed it up.
He is also correct, a HD intended for one model of Mac won't work properly in another, but it should at least recognize something is on the hard drive. Usually you should be able to boot into it as well, so long as the OS is updated to the latest version.
He didn't damage the HD. Your HD simply isn't in the machine. You can't "unformat" a hard drive, only reformat.
Don't think you will be getting the old one back for your data, so I hoped you backed it up.
He is also correct, a HD intended for one model of Mac won't work properly in another, but it should at least recognize something is on the hard drive. Usually you should be able to boot into it as well, so long as the OS is updated to the latest version.
He did put the hard drive in the new MacBook Pro. When I boot from the installer disk and launch Disk Utilities, it can see the internal hard drive but it can't verify it or fix it. The only choice would be to erase it. Is a MacBook that much different from a MacBook Pro? They were purchased within two weeks of each other.
im not sure that the drive itself wasnt compatible.
it could be a matter of the OSX build on the drive that isnt reading well with the internal hardware.
if you have a spare drive or two you can try to install osx on that drive and migrate the internal over to that than do a reverse clone back to the internal?
if thats the case.
like sstated earlier if you have it updated to the latest OSX build it shouldnt technically be a problem.
it could be a matter of the OSX build on the drive that isnt reading well with the internal hardware.
if you have a spare drive or two you can try to install osx on that drive and migrate the internal over to that than do a reverse clone back to the internal?
if thats the case.
like sstated earlier if you have it updated to the latest OSX build it shouldnt technically be a problem.
You can swap a hard drive from a macbook to a macbookpro. But don't expect the OSX that booted and ran on the macbook to run on the macbookpro. I haven't tested it but everything I've read leads me to believe that to be true.
The 'genius' should have told you that and he should have told you that you would need to install osx again on the drive once it's in the new mbp.
If what you have on the drive is very important to you... take it out of the mbp... put it in an enclosure and use another mac to read & recover the data you need. That might also work with target mode. At the very least it would tell you if your data is still on this disk.
The 'genius' should have told you that and he should have told you that you would need to install osx again on the drive once it's in the new mbp.
If what you have on the drive is very important to you... take it out of the mbp... put it in an enclosure and use another mac to read & recover the data you need. That might also work with target mode. At the very least it would tell you if your data is still on this disk.