Resolved Reinstalling from USB or Internet Recovery - not working

[frustrated12]

I've got a mid-2012 13" macbook pro.
Tuesday, the original hard drive seemed to die. Computer completely froze, + strange noises, I forced it to turn off, restarting resulted in it alternating between the prohibited symbol, the folder/question mark, and the apple logo with a rebooting progress bar that would eventually stop moving. Internet recovery froze if I tried it, and disk utility had messages about partitions being unavailable for boot and being out of hard drive space (don't recall the exact messages).

Fast forward to installing a SSD today (SanDisk Ultra II).
-Internet Recovery: I have tried over both WiFi and Ethernet. Both result in a message saying "about 5 minutes remaining", it gets to 1 second, goes back to 5 minutes. This cycle repeats for 15-30 minutes, at which point I get the following message.

-Bootable USB Drive. I made a High Sierra USB drive using Install Disk Creator. Booting to this led to this screen:

It went to an install screen and progress bar, took about 3 minutes, and rebooted to the prohibited symbol. After 10/15 seconds, it changed to the apple logo and and a loading bar. It slowly moved to 25% loaded, and then jumped to the MacOS utilities screen shown above, without any signs of having actually installed anything. This is what disk utility shows.

The SSD is formatted as HFS+/MacOS Extended, and I tried the High Sierra install with it formatted as APFS - made no difference. I've erased and reformatted multiple times, it's set to GUID partition table. I've tried Internet Recovery and the USB drive multiple times and get the same results. Any ideas? (It boots and runs fine with Linux Mint off a USB, that's what I'm using currently)

 

[DeltaMac]

Do you have maximum RAM installed (16 GB)?
Remove both sticks, and re-insert just one stick, then try the install again. If that succeeds this time, shut down, add the second stick of RAM, and boot again.
If none of that helps, your symptoms CAN be one result of a bad SATA cable. Those ribbon cables are well known here to be the cause of a variety of problems (and you did disturb that cable when replacing the drive. Sometimes, that's all it takes. The SATA cables can be quite fragile.) They are not expensive, and easy to replace - so try that. If there is no difference after trying a new SATA cable, try a different SSD.

 

[frustrated12]

Do you have maximum RAM installed (16 GB)?
Remove both sticks, and re-insert just one stick, then try the install again. If that succeeds this time, shut down, add the second stick of RAM, and boot again.
If none of that helps, your symptoms CAN be one result of a bad SATA cable. Those ribbon cables are well known here to be the cause of a variety of problems (and you did disturb that cable when replacing the drive. Sometimes, that's all it takes. The SATA cables can be quite fragile.) They are not expensive, and easy to replace - so try that. If there is no difference after trying a new SATA cable, try a different SSD.

Factory 4GB of RAM is all that's installed. SATA cable - would attempting to install Linux on the SSD be a decent (and free) test of both the drive and the cable?

 

[casperes1996]

Factory 4GB of RAM is all that's installed. SATA cable - would attempting to install Linux on the SSD be a decent (and free) test of both the drive and the cable?

I recommend not just trying installing it, but also running off the disk for a while after installation should it succeed, but yes. This would test the connection.

 

[frustrated12]

I recommend not just trying installing it, but also running off the disk for a while after installation should it succeed, but yes. This would test the connection.

Attempting to install Linux results in a variety of results. Sometimes it doesn't seem to see the SSD at all, and tells me that the device doesn't have enough space, because it only sees my USB drive. Sometimes it does see the space on the SSD, but quickly freezes and gives a message saying the drive doesn't exist/can't be found. Sounds like a new SATA cable is hopefully my solution. Thanks!

 

[casperes1996]

Attempting to install Linux results in a variety of results. Sometimes it doesn't seem to see the SSD at all, and tells me that the device doesn't have enough space, because it only sees my USB drive. Sometimes it does see the space on the SSD, but quickly freezes and gives a message saying the drive doesn't exist/can't be found. Sounds like a new SATA cable is hopefully my solution. Thanks!

You need a new SATA cable, yeah

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

If your MBpro is a non-retina, this is almost certainly a problem with the internal SATA ribbon cable to the internal drive.

That's why you can BOOT EXTERNALLY without problems -- such as from the USB installer.
But... try to communicate with the internal drive, and all sorts of problems appear.
It's not the drive itself -- it's the cable.

If you've already changed to an SSD, then "you know your way around" inside the MBP.
It's a simple matter to replace the ribbon cable.
You can get the part number from ifixit.com.
Then... either buy it from them or elsewhere online.

Important:
Apple had a free replacement program for these ribbon cables due to the high rate of failures.
Your MBP may be too old to qualify for the free replacement, but I would still bring it to a brick-n-mortar Apple Store genius bar and ask. You never know.

 

[frustrated12]

A new SATA cable fixed it, thanks all! Apple stopped replacing them for free sometime in 2017, according to a local apple certified shop - no actual apple stores near me.

 

[casperes1996]

A new SATA cable fixed it, thanks all! Apple stopped replacing them for free sometime in 2017, according to a local apple certified shop - no actual apple stores near me.

You're welcome. . Hope it didn't end up being too expensive in spite of Apple not doing free servicing anymore