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one1

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 17, 2007
1,176
29
Chattanooga, TN
I can boot my 13" 2008 aluminum macbook with the SSD thats in it and have zero issues.

When I put the 7200 rpm SATA from my macbook pro in it, I get the flashing folder.

I originally put the SSD in my aluminum 13" to make it as fast as the Pro, now I want the Pro faster and want to swap the drives.

Both run their respective hard drives well, and the Pro runs the SSD fine. The 13" won't run the Pro's sata.

Both hard drives are on El Capitan.

Macbook 5,2
Macbook 5,4
 
Probably a faulty HDD cable on the 13" machine. The cable can clearly supply enough to power the SSD but not enough to power the 7200rpm drive......

My son has a MacBook Pro 13 which he has been using with a 1TB HDD for a while. Suddenly it stopped booting but boots fine with the 1TB in an external caddy. The MacBook will also boot fine with a 250GB SATA HDD in the internal bay.......

The HDD cables in these machines are known to regularly fail for some reason or another.
 
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