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Hard drive died, new SSD will not mount.

cfedu

cfedu

Suspended
Original poster
Mar 8, 2009
1,166
1,566
Toronto
My cousins 2012 13" MacBook Pro died this week, one week out of warranty. She told me she was getting the spinning beach ball for the past 2 weeks and it finally died a few days ago. I thought it must be a hard drive failure so told her to get an SSD and have her boyfriend change it. I would have done it but i'm in a different city.

The new drive is a Samsung 840 250 GB ssd. After they changed the drive they tried to do an internet recovery but the SSD does not show up in Disk utility. The DVD drive does show up and so does her USB stick.

I talked her through a PRAM reset, and SMC reset, and still do not see the drive mounted in disk utility.

The SSD does mount on a windows based PC so i think the SSD is fine.

She has an appointment tomorrow with an apple specialist, she will bring in the macbook pro with the SSD as they left it inside.


Do you think the old hard drive was the real problem or do you think they just broke something installing the SSD? What other modes of failure do you think this could have been caused by?

Thanks
 
Last edited:
The SSD needs to be formatted into an OS X type file system for OS X installation to recognize it; most common being Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

All SSDs are defaulted into NTFS which means Windows reads it off the bat.
 
jav6454 said:
The SSD needs to be formatted into an OS X type file system for OS X installation to recognize it; most common being Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

All SSDs are defaulted into NTFS which means Windows reads it off the bat.
Click to expand...

Yes but the drive should show up in DU ready for formatting.
 
jav6454 said:
The SSD needs to be formatted into an OS X type file system for OS X installation to recognize it;
Click to expand...
The current partitioning scheme and the filesystem/format of those partitions should not prevent the drive from showing up under Disk Utility, though, and OP clearly stated in the post that they went into Disk Utility and the drive is nowhere to be found.

...although, granted, OP's terminology is confusing; technically, drives don't "mount", the logical volumes -- partitions -- on the drives are mounted, and will only mount if the OS in question recognizes and supports the volume's filesystem. So when OP says they don't "see the drive mounted in Disk Utility," this is ambiguous, and casts doubt on what was meant before when OP wrote that "the SSD does not show up in Disk Utility."

cfedu, do you mean that the drive shows up but the Mount button is grayed out in Disk Utility, or do you mean that it literally is not visible anywhere in Disk Utility? If the former, then yeah, jav6454 is right, and you need to repartition the disk as GUID and create an HFS+ volume on it.

If the drive is not recognized by the system at all, but is recognized when plugged into a Windows PC, then, man, I don't know what to tell you. It makes me wonder if in fact the failure that your cousin experienced was not actually with the hard drive but was some problem with the logic board itself. Perhaps the main hard drive bay no longer works. Does she have another laptop-form-factor SATA hard drive that she can stick in there to see if the computer only has problems with the SSD or in fact has problems with any HDD?

-- Nathan
 
NathanA said:
The current partitioning scheme and the filesystem/format of those partitions should not prevent the drive from showing up under Disk Utility, though, and OP clearly stated in the post that they went into Disk Utility and the drive is nowhere to be found.

...although, granted, OP's terminology is confusing; technically, drives don't "mount", the logical volumes -- partitions -- on the drives are mounted, and will only mount if the OS in question recognizes and supports the volume's filesystem. So when OP says they don't "see the drive mounted in Disk Utility," this is ambiguous, and casts doubt on what was meant before when OP wrote that "the SSD does not show up in Disk Utility."

cfedu, do you mean that the drive shows up but the Mount button is grayed out in Disk Utility, or do you mean that it literally is not visible anywhere in Disk Utility? If the former, then yeah, jav6454 is right, and you need to repartition the disk as GUID and create an HFS+ volume on it.

If the drive is not recognized by the system at all, but is recognized when plugged into a Windows PC, then, man, I don't know what to tell you. It makes me wonder if in fact the failure that your cousin experienced was not actually with the hard drive but was some problem with the logic board itself. Perhaps the main hard drive bay no longer works. Does she have another laptop-form-factor SATA hard drive that she can stick in there to see if the computer only has problems with the SSD or in fact has problems with any HDD?

-- Nathan
Click to expand...



I only see disk 0 (1.9 GB ) and the superdrive in disk utility. She then plugged in a USB stick and it popped up right away.

I was not their to troubleshoot, I have an SATA dock I could have used to try test all the drives. I've changed many hard drives in macs before but never installed an SSD. I would hopping it was some stupid error.

I'm guessing logic board is bad or her boyfriend broke on connector. I hope apple has pitty on her tomorrow and fixes it since its only a week out of warranty.

She will find out tomorrow.
 

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It's hard to say... need more pictures of it. Also, for the posters above, I meant, it is detected by OS X installer, but since the partition/filesystem is not recognized by OS X, then it won't install. It needs reformatting into an OS X applicable partition.
 
Anitramane said:
The Sata cable on unibody has a designflaw, get a new cable.
Click to expand...

So it could be a simple fix as a SATA cable? Do you think apple would swap that out for free since its not a big fix and only a week out of warranty?
 
cfedu said:
So it could be a simple fix as a SATA cable? Do you think apple would swap that out for free since its not a big fix and only a week out of warranty?
Click to expand...

Only one way to find out. Make a Genius appointment but put the factory drive back in first or they won't touch it.
 
without knowing the nature of the original failure, I would put the original drive back in. If it shows up in Disk Utility during OS X install routine, then suspect the new SSD (either it needs a firmware update, or is a bad unit ... It happens.)

If the old drive doesn't show up, then that may not mean anything if it's a symptom of its original failure. So if the old drive doesn't show up, try it in an external USB drive enclosure in another system (ie Boyfriend's system.) If it shows up there, but not in original Mac, suspect something being wrong with the mac (sata cable or logic board.)

If it doesn't show up there either, then that drive is definitely bad, and you're back to "square one": Take it to Apple Store (with original drive reinstalled,) and have them take a look.
 
In fact there is a recent post about the sata cable in 2012 macbooks rubbing on the badly machined cases. It is very likely to be the cable not the logic board
 
I realize this post doesn't particularly help with the OP's problems, but...

....THIS is why you ALWAYS "prep" a new drive first, BEFORE you install it.

Use either an external enclosure or a USB/SATA docking station.
Initialize the drive.
Install the OS onto it.
See if it boots, then create a "temporary" account.
Get all software updates installed.
Migrate your data from the old drive.
THEN, install it!
 
T'hain Esh Kelch said:
I have often see those models have trouble with the sata cable, giving the symptoms described. I would try and replace it.
Click to expand...

Anitramane said:
The Sata cable on unibody has a designflaw, get a new cable.
Click to expand...

Mnowell69 said:
In fact there is a recent post about the sata cable in 2012 macbooks rubbing on the badly machined cases. It is very likely to be the cable not the logic board
Click to expand...

Thorburn said:
When you fit it line the inside of the bay with insulation tape as per this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amg5w0rlwDo

The flaw is more the finish of the inside of the unibody, rather than the cable itself. The finish is rough and they rub together, wearing through the insulation on the cable.
Click to expand...

Fishrrman said:
I realize this post doesn't particularly help with the OP's problems, but...

....THIS is why you ALWAYS "prep" a new drive first, BEFORE you install it.

Use either an external enclosure or a USB/SATA docking station.
Initialize the drive.
Install the OS onto it.
See if it boots, then create a "temporary" account.
Get all software updates installed.
Migrate your data from the old drive.
THEN, install it!
Click to expand...




I thank everyone for their Help.

It was a defective cable, It turned out that she still had 1 week of warranty. I took her word when she told me she bought it over a year ago.

Apple took out the SSD and put her original hard drive back in. It works great with the new cable. She will clone the drive to the SSD later on and have her boyfriend reinstall it. She also bought apple care, I told her to buy it last year but she forgot to!!
 
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