Issue formatting drive

[Vanilla Face]

Long story short, I ended up needing to reformat my SSD in my 2011 13" Macbook Pro. It's an aftermarket drive (Samsung 840). I couldn't get the drive to reformat using disk utility. I tried internet recovery, target disk mode with an iMac and another MBP. I figured there was likely something wrong with the drive, or drive cable. I put the drive in my Mini and was able to reformat it and zero it out no problem. I put it back in my MBP and couldn't install OS X. Back in the Mini I could. So I figured there was something wrong with the drive cable or something else in the MBP. I went ahead and put one of the Mini's HDDs in the MBP and was able to format it without any issue and had no problem installing OS X. What's going on?

tl;dr: MBP couldn't format SSD but could format HDD while Mini was able to format SSD.

 

[Fishrrman]

Suggestion:

Get either:
- an external 2.5" USB3 enclosure
or
- a USB3/SATA docking station
or
- a USB3/SATA "dongle" adapter

... and try prepping the drive (while attached to the MacBook) that way.

Install the OS, update the OS, install your apps, accounts and data, and then try a "test boot" with the MacBook BEFORE you attempt to "do drive surgery" and swap the drive into the MB.

If it can boot and run the MB mounted externally, there's a good chance it will do so after being mounted internally.

But the trick is to do the "prep and test" BEFORE you install....

 

[Vanilla Face]

Suggestion:

Get either:
- an external 2.5" USB3 enclosure
or
- a USB3/SATA docking station
or
- a USB3/SATA "dongle" adapter

... and try prepping the drive (while attached to the MacBook) that way.

Install the OS, update the OS, install your apps, accounts and data, and then try a "test boot" with the MacBook BEFORE you attempt to "do drive surgery" and swap the drive into the MB.

If it can boot and run the MB mounted externally, there's a good chance it will do so after being mounted internally.

But the trick is to do the "prep and test" BEFORE you install....

The drive had been working fine in the computer for about 1.5 years. I'm not sure why it started having issues.

 

[Fishrrman]

Could it be the ribbon drive cable in the MBPro? Some folks have had issues with them.

 

[Vanilla Face]

Could it be the ribbon drive cable in the MBPro? Some folks have had issues with them.

That's what I was thinking until the HDD from the Mini worked in the MBP. I still have it in there and it isn't having any issues.