Issue: found this 2012 MacBook Pro in the trash, and when booted it gave me the question mark. I replaced the drive and it doesn’t even recognize it in the recovery mode disk utility. Any ideas?

Macbooks
21

Grayson said:
@Zane
They probably assume the cable will never be touched in the lifetime of the machine so they didn’t bother making it sturdy/not easily broken if the hard drive is upgraded.

Just my 2c

I’m almost positive that if Apple serviced the machine and replaced the drive that they’d replace the cable as well. Doesn’t change that it’s poor design, but it more than likely is something they’d take care of at the same time as replacing the drive.

Of course the HDD MBPs are now “too old” to be serviced by Apple though…

22

@Striker
The cables would fail regularly through normal use, not just when being replaced. I had a 2012 MacBook Pro and this happened to me literally three or four times - amazing machine apart from that, wouldn’t be surprised if I was still using it today if it hadn’t got stolen lol

23

@Jace
This comment is empty, admin should fix

24

@Striker
They probably know some way to replace it without damaging the cable, or they just replace the cable if it busts

25

Grayson said:
@Striker
They probably know some way to replace it without damaging the cable, or they just replace the cable if it busts

This comment is empty, admin should fix

26

@Grayson
Yea, except sometimes they design a cable that’ll break if you simply just use the machine as intended. And then they refuse to extend the repair program to all the devices affected by that issue.

27

@Jacquelinequiz
That’s the big problem

28

@Colby
You wonder why they had to do it that way

29

Grayson said:
@Colby
You wonder why they had to do it that way

There’s plenty of room in there for a traditional ribbon cable unless you’re using a full 9.5mm height hdd, but there are plenty of windows laptops that limit you to a 7.5mm hdd.

I have a 2011 mbp which is basically identical to ops 2012

30

@Colby
That’s probably why. They figured someone will try to put a 9.5mm drive in and it won’t fit so they do it this way

31

Grayson said:
@Colby
That’s probably why. They figured someone will try to put a 9.5mm drive in and it won’t fit so they do it this way

These laptops ARE from the days of Hdds lol. Hell mine the optical drive can be replaced with a hdd too but it has to be sata 2 otherwise you can’t write to it… they made some very odd and not user friendly choices on these machines

32

@Colby
Yeah you wonder how hard they go out of their way to make their machines have that typical Apple fashion to them

33

Grayson said:
@Colby
Yeah you wonder how hard they go out of their way to make their machines have that typical Apple fashion to them

This comment is empty, admin should fix

34

Grayson said:
@Keir
Wow, what a poorly designed cable

More than likely most of the manufacturing defects are caused when the slave child responsible for a particular area of the assembly line dies in the middle of production.

35

Grayson said:

Keir said:
Hard drive cable is a very very common thing to fail.

What causes it to fail? It stays inside the laptop and never moves around or bends right?

Don’t forget, even though a cable may not be physically moving, physical forces are still acting on it. Usually some part of the cable will be bent, with some tension on it. There is energy acting on that bend. I’ve seen network cables that have sat in wiring closets just up and stop working for no apparent reason because of this.

36

@Harmon
Yeah that’s true

37

Grayson said:

Keir said:
Hard drive cable is a very very common thing to fail.

What causes it to fail? It stays inside the laptop and never moves around or bends right?

Many lazy people who work on these will remove the drive but not replace the pins so it remains lose and it’s a small css as blue with a huge connector

38

Grayson said:

Keir said:
Hard drive cable is a very very common thing to fail.

What causes it to fail? It stays inside the laptop and never moves around or bends right?

Flat cable with extremely thin wiring that likely shorts out…I’ve replaced them before for customers…I’d never scrap one of these MBPs for such a simple and cheap fix.

39

@Corey
That’s a dumb idea to have such a thin cable

40

Grayson said:
@Corey
That’s a dumb idea to have such a thin cable

Agreed…they ran it as a flex cable UNDER the hard drive, even though there would’ve been more room and less bend going OVER the hard drive or even around it ¯_(ツ)_/¯