MBP13: Internal HDD undetected although external works

[jln1]

Several weeks ago I posted in the Software section that my MPB (2009) was having trouble reformatting/erasing/restoring/installing OSX on my new internal mac-compatible HDD. Still I was able to reinstall OSX on my external and work from there.

I never did resolve the problem, and now it's gotten much worse: my MPB doesn't detect my internal HDD at all. Only my external HDD and optical drive shows up on Disk Utility and System Profiler.

I've been hoping someone will be able to diagnose the problem. I can't help but suspect the worst: is this a problem with my logic board?

 

[getz76]

What type of drive did you install? Brand? Model?

If I were to venture a guess, I would think your new hard drive is defective since you installed it. What was wrong with the prior drive?

Do you still have the original drive? Try installing that instead.

Let's do some troubleshooting and you can eliminate some possibilities...

 

[jln1]

Yes, I should've explained in detail, sorry. I bought a 500GB WD Blue Caviar after my old HDD failed due to a drop from the counter. When I first installed the new drive, Disk Utility did detect it, and I was able to reformat it to HJS+. I couldn't install OSX after that however, and I couldn't reformat/erase/restore or modify the drive in any way.

For some reason it wouldn't "unmount" although I hadn't run anything on it. I tried to get around the issue, including various attempts to force-unmount it and erase/repartition/install OSX to no avail. I've recorded those various errors in this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1176653/

I gave up on the issue, preferring to work on my sister's imac now that she's gone. I'm going back to school in a few weeks though. I thought I'd take another look at the laptop yesterday and try manually zeroing the drive, except that it was no longer being detected in Terminal under Diskutil List, or in System Profiler. I've also tested with my old drive, and ditto: it's not detected either.

 

[Naimfan]

Well, either both the hard drives are bad, which is possible, or the cable or logic board has a problem. Try the new drive in an external enclosure--that will tell you which.

 

[jln1]

Well, either both the hard drives are bad, which is possible, or the cable or logic board has a problem. Try the new drive in an external enclosure--that will tell you which.

Right, that's me - missing the obvious. Thanks for distilling it down for me. I'll let you know how it goes once my enclosure gets here in a couple of days.

 

[Naimfan]

Right, that's me - missing the obvious. Thanks for distilling it down for me. I'll let you know how it goes once my enclosure gets here in a couple of days.

Any time! Let us know how it goes - hopefully it's that both drives were bad so you can simply RMA the new one.