My original hard drive crashed. I have a backup on a Seagate external hard drive. I installed a new Crucial SSD and am having trouble formatting the new SSD with the operating system. Internet recovery has not helped. How can I format the new SSD without the old hard drive?
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It maybe the real problem is the HD SATA cable is worn here Vs a bad HDD.
All of the 13" Unibody MacBook Pro system's have a problem with the cable abrading against the uppercase. Here's the IFIXIT guide to replace it: MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Mid 2010 Hard Drive Cable Replacement You'll want to place some electricians tape on the uppercase were the cable rests to protect it. The other thing here is Apple updated the cable on the newer system. Here's the cable you want: MacBook Pro 13" Unibody (Mid 2012) Hard Drive Cable. The shape is a bit different and you can only mount one screw on the bracket but thats OK.
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To install your OS onto your SSD you'll need to create a USB thumb drive OS installer. Lets see if we can get your HDD running here externally using this SATA to USB adapter: Startech 2.5" SATA to USB adapter. You'll need to reformat the SSD as a bad cable tends to corrupt the boot sectors just enough things could go bad later on. You'll need to use the Option key to get to it to boot up. Follow thins guide: How to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive. Apple is still having issues whit the new file system (APFS) in High Sierra on SATA based SSD. As such I don't recommend using it yet. It's great on the newer PCIe/NVMe drives! Good Luck
Reference: Mac startup key combinations
Once you get your SSD going you may want to reformat your HD and get an external case for it. An extra HDD is always useful.
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If for some reason you can’t format your SSD via “Internet Recovery” mode, you will need though an additional laptop or desktop (either one) to go into “Target Disk” mode. There it will allow you to format it there.
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