Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MBP: Swapped HDDs in 2 laptops (17" to 15") now I get a flashing folder on one...HELP

coledog

coledog

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 14, 2006
622
1
Roanoke, VA
I have a 17" MBP (i5 latest model etc) and my dad has a 15" MBP (i5 latest model etc).

I decided the 17" was just too big for my to cart around on tech calls etc so we were going to trade.

I opened them both up and removed each hard drive. After putting his hard drive in the 17" it booted up just fine (slightly slow but it came up).

I put my hard drive in the 15" and a flashing folder icon came up and it won't boot. I tried putting it in the 17" again and it had the same issue.

I tried running disk utility from the DVD and that was alright, but when I tried to repair the disk it found a couple errors but could not complete the repair.

Any thoughts or suggestions??
 
You might have accidentally damaged it with static or something :S Never heard of the flashing folder error though?
 
So you put your old drive back in and it is doing the same thing?

If so make sure the sata cable is properly plugged into the logics board. Thats the only thing i can think of. Apple have no hardware specific limitations you should have no issue swapping the drives. I do it all the time at work.
 
Yea I have heard of it...Usually means some issue with the HDD heads.

I don't hear any different clicking when I turn it on.

Also, I've replaced hundreds of HDDs and never had an issue with static electricity...Quite odd.
 
Reelknead1 said:
So you put your old drive back in and it is doing the same thing?

If so make sure the sata cable is properly plugged into the logics board. Thats the only thing i can think of. Apple have no hardware specific limitations you should have no issue swapping the drives. I do it all the time at work.
Click to expand...

Yea, that's what I thought! My dad's HDD booted up in either Mac.
Mine won't boot in both though...
 
coledog said:
Yea, that's what I thought! My dad's HDD booted up in either Mac.
Mine won't boot in both though...
Click to expand...


Then i would say that something physical is messed up on your computer. I don't know what the models are besides 15 and 17" but if they both use the same sata connector you could try swapping them and see if your computer works with the 17" connector. That is if they are the same. If not it might be off to the Apple store.

Another thing to try would be insert an install disc and go to disk utility through that to see if it even sees the drive.
 
It can't be a HDD cable since his working HDD will run in either MBP.

I opened the DVD's disk utility and that saw my HDD in the Mac but wouldn't repair the disk.
 
Ok i thought your computer wouldn't work with either. In that case it looks like you did something to the drive while moving it. If you have an external, hook it up to the working computer and see if you can access the drive that way. Thats about the extent of my ideas.
 
mine done this with a bad vista install in boot camp. it killed the osx part when i went to install the osx the computer error ed so i had kill the vista one too to get it to install osx
 
I was able to rebuild the HDD with Disk Warrior...Now when I try to boot it spins at the Apple logo.

I booted into the DVD and repaired the disk and the permissions. It's still spinning...Any other thoughts?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Hdd error. I think it could be bad or going bad. Not sure how to help resolve. If you have a backup reformat in disk utility and the reinstall the OS.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back