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Western Digital Blue 1TB as internal in optical drive won't work

I have purchased a Western Digital Blue 1TB SATA (112 MB/sec Read, 111 MB/sec Write • SATA III (6.0GB/s) • 8MB cache • 5400RPM • 2.5 inch ) to replace the original Apple included 500GB Hitachi SATA that I have been using as a secondary drive inside an iFixit SATA Optical Bay SATA Hard Drive Enclosure. (I installed an SSD drive as my main HD a couple of years ago).

So the the original Hitachi drive works fine with the SATA Optical Bay SATA Hard Drive Enclosure but it is starting to fail (according to Techtool Pro), hence the need to replace it.

My problem is that once the new Western Digital SATA is internal to the machine I can't read or write (error 51), and I can't do anything to erase or unmount the volume or eject the volume while using the base system (ie. booted from the internal SSD drive). I can reformat it fine as an external HD (inside external casing), and if I boot to online recovery mode (hence not using the internal SSD drive at all).

Could there be an inconsistency with the Western Digital 1TB drive that does not allow it to function properly as a secondary internal drive?

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Just for clarity the original HD that does work internally with the iFixit SATA Optical Bay is the Hitachi 7K500

Interface: SATA 3Gb/s

Cache: 16MB

Capacity: 500GB

Spindle Speed: 7200 RPM

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I have a feeling the connection to the optical drive for the secondary hard drive adapter is starting to fail.

Yes bad adapters for SATA hdds can cause the hard drive to get damaged or corrupt data on the drive when power is too unstable to the drive or CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) failure meaning data needed to be resent again because it didn't match a hashed number code that signifies that the data arrived uncorrupted to the drive.

I hope that made sense.

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So if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, I should replace the iFixit Optical Bay SATA Hard Drive Enclosure?

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Or do I need to replace a cable?

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After doing some testing you decide which to replace when reading and following the below.

Well you can test it by swapping out the primary hard drive to there and see if it works at all at least.

If it doesn't then you may also want to test the optical drive that used to be there in the first plce to confirm that the actual connector on the logic board is not broken.

If optical drive works fine then I recommend replacing the optical drive adapter.

It's a bit tricky to test but its good to rule out parts that could potentially go bad.

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