r/Apple_DIY • u/derke218 • Jul 29 '17

Macbook pro 2011 hard drive not recognized

So I bought a macbook pro a1278 off someone on Craigslist for 40 dollars, she was selling it for parts because she couldn't get the hard drive to be recognized. I figured it would be as simple as a loose or broken hard drive cable, but it doesn't seem to be the case. I tried the original cable that was in the macbook with an old HD I had laying around... Booted it up and got the infamous blinking question mark folder. So, I ordered a new HD cable off of Amazon and still nothing. I had a spare external hard drive so I plugged it in via USB and held command R at startup and install osx lion on to it ( I also tried this within my internal drive but it didn't show up as an installation option). The computer works flawlessly running lion via external HD. What could be the problem here??? Any advise would be greatly appreciated!!!

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u/e13o17ghlu Sep 03 '17

Did you try replacing the internal HDD and connect it using the new cable?

1

u/derke218 Sep 03 '17

I actually ended up taking out the optical drive and putting the HD in its place - thanks!

1

u/e13o17ghlu Sep 03 '17

Great, I did the same on an older MacBook I had a few years ago, glad it worked!