Replacement hard drive doesn’t show in disk utility

[19nffc97]

I had a SSD in my MacBook Pro 2012 13” which started to run really slowly. After trying numerous things I decided to format the drive and then reinstall the software but this made no difference whatsoever and it was as slow as ever so i assumed the SSD was defective.

I have 2 spare HDD which I know are working as I tried them in an external carriage on a different MacBook. I formatted them to mas OS (journaled) and used them to replace the defective SSD. I then turn the MacBook on holding cmd+r and boot into recovery, I go to disk utility and there is nothing showing in there, there is no drive to install the OS and this happens with both HDD’s. Am I doing something wrong or could it be a hardware error? I reinstalled the SSD and it shows in the disk utility so I know its not the cable.

 

[chscag]

A SSD usually does not fail that way. Mostly, it's a sudden failure without much warning. So, are you sure the SSD is defective? Also, you should change out the SATA cable regardless. If you've been using the machine since 2012, that cable is worn and should be changed.

 

[19nffc97]

I’m not sure the SSD is defective but I though that if I formatted it and did a clean install then anything slowing it down would be cleared from the disk. Thats why I though it might be a hardware issue being an old machine. I’ll replace the cable and see if that helps. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Analias]

It'll be the cable. 2012s are notorious for them failing, and they usually fail in this way where they half work, leading you to rule them out as a suspect. You can get the cable for $20 on ebay.

 

[19nffc97]

Thanks both for the replies and you were right. I replaced the cable and it's working great again. Thanks for saving me the time and money!