My Problem

I received a Macbook pro from my work and it didnt have a hard drive in it. I purchased a new hard drive and the mac would not recognize the drive. I read some forums and they said it could be the hard drive cable.

My Fix

I found this site ifixit.com and ordered a new one. The shipping was so fast, I had it 3 days sooner than the earliest expected date. I found a guide on ifixit.com and followed the directions and it when it very easily. I started the computer up and it works great!!

My Advice

Be patient!

My Problem

About a year and a half ago I dropped my MBP ever so slightly on the floor. It was in my messenger bag and the strap slid from my shoulder. I was able to catch it, but the corner of the bag hit the ground. When I opened my MBP - which was in sleep mode -everything froze. After a reboot the question mark folder popped up. My hard drive had died. Or so I thought.

After replacing the hard drive, nothing happened. The problem was there to stay. So I took the hard drive back to the store and bought an external one instead. I installed OSX on that one, and lived about a year and a half with OSX on that drive. I wa too low on money to have an expert look at it.

Then a friend of mine got the same problem, and it appeared that his SATA cable was broken. So then I was almost positive it was my SATA cable, not the hard drive that had to be replaced. I had no money to have someone do it, so I stumbled upon ifixit and the rest is history.

My Fix

The repair was fairly easy, although I kind of had experience doing it when I replaced my HDD. However, I found that two of the three battery clips had broken off, so I might need to replace that one day :')

My Advice

Be patient and repair your laptop under well lit circumstances. You're handling a thousand+ dollar machine, so take care of it. Don't rush anything. Print the guide up front or read it on a phone or tablet. Stay positive. It's easier than it looks.

My Problem

Macbook Pro wouldn't recognize the internal hard drive but external drives and bootable CD/DVD worked fine.

My Fix

Straightforward, simple.

My Advice

Be careful, don't overtighten anything, bottom panel screws go in on an angle. Hard drive hold down screws are captive. Clean all the dust while you're in there.

My Problem

I was starting to have the 'spinning beach ball' and hard drive issues, until it just would not work. At that time, I had problems with my back up drives and had no back up of my data. I thought that the drive was dead and that my 'life' on the HD was gone. What a sick feeling. Apple Store recommended contacting these services to retrieve data off my drive. They cost $$$. As it turned out, a friend put the drive into an external USB case and it worked! I put a new 1Tb drive in the MacBook Pro and it was not recognized and I could not initialize it. I then realized it was the HD cable. Until it came in the mail, I booted off the USB drive.

My Fix

Super easy. I did not disconnect the battery since I did not have a star screw driver. Everything is wonderful. Now I have a one terabyte drive, my data is backed up, and life is good.

My Advice

Hint, pay the less than $2 difference for Priority Mail. It went from the West Coast to Florida in 2 days.

My Problem

Dropped the MacBook and wouldn't re-boot.

My Fix

Repair was fairly straight forward

My Advice

Check blogs online and with your friends before turning to the "experts"!

My Problem

Macbook Pro running very slow and near constant spinning beach ball of death so decided to upgrade to an SSD. Installed a 480 Corsair GS but Macbook would not recognize drive. Search lead to: http://www.gcsdblogs.org/roodhouse/?p=25...

Replaced SATA cable and works incredibly. Also the spinning beach ball of death is gone. I think the SBBOD problem was due to the SATA cable all the time as I tested it with my old spinning drive as well.

My Fix

Ordered pentalobe screwdriver at the same time as cable. Followed ifixit.com install instructions. Super easy!

My Advice

Monkey see...Monkey do! Much less expensive than a new Macbook Pro! I now have an extra $2500 for Xmas. So long and thanks for all the fish!

My Problem

This cable solved the problem, the computer couldn't sometimes see the hard disk but computer worked with usb drive so I figured it might be the disk or the cable.

My Fix

Smooth!

My Advice

You see pretty much what you have to remove to get the old cable out, and it's just doing it in reverse when installing the new one. You have to loosen the aluminum bar that sits between the battery/hd and logic board, in order to remove the rubber grommet on the hd-cable. You just loosen 3 screws and place em on the magnets.

My Problem

Hard drive cable snapped off when changing hard drives.

My Fix

Piece o' cake!

Remove a few screws, romove sticky tape, replace.

My Advice

Great support, fast shipping.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend.

Thanks!

My Problem

My MBP mid 09 started taking forever to startup and I noticed that the sleep indicator light wasn't functioning unless I applied some pressure to the underside of the case. One day the computer just refused to startup and started getting kernel panics and the infamous "missing os" folder at startup. After looking up online I found that this particular model of MBP has issues with bad SATA Cables, I suspected a different reason other than the hard drive, as I managed to start the laptop once, checked the drive and everything seemed fine.

My Fix

It was super easy following the ifixit guides, the part came nicely packed and even though it was labeled as "used" on the website, it looked brand new. After installing it, the computer came back to life and working great!

My Advice

Don't be afraid to try your own fixes, in the end the repair costed me something like 50 dollars. I'm sure it would have been much more than that at an apple store!

My Problem

The Hard Drive cable was ripped out by a former employee causing the machine to not work.

My Fix

Your tutorial is very well put together. Was able to follow and have the machine up and running.

My Advice

Think about putting together a tutorila for users to get certified in apple with the tutorials you already have.