Replacing Mid-2009 15" Hard Drive Problems

[bigbarr]

Hi, I swapped my hard disk on the above mentioned machine and it won't boot. When I turn the machine on it tells me that there is no bootable disk. I have previously booted from the disk via usb, so i know there is a bootable partition on it. I swapped back the original drive and it boots up fine. Why wont the external drive boot when run internally?

 

[iLog.Genius]

My guess would be the format/partition of the external HDD.

 

[bigbarr]

i checked through finder and the external is partitioned Mac OS X Extended Journaled.

They both seem to be partitioned in the same way.

 

[bigbarr]

partition map is the same on both as well

 

[vanc]

Is that caused by the EFI 1.7 update?

 

[bigbarr]

Perhaps. I have since done the update on the firmware. I will try to swap the drive again tonight to see. The external drive is nothing special. Just one of those 250GB wd external drives.

 

[iLog.Genius]

Put the non-working HDD into your MacBook Pro and boot off the install DVD. From there, Disk Utility will be able to tell you why it's not booting.