An Easy Fix That Saved a Hard Drive

My Problem

A coworker brought her Macbook in because it wouldn't start up—she was getting the dreaded question mark-folder icon. I tried to repair the drive with DiskWarrior, but even that couldn't locate the disk. I popped the drive out of the chassis and put it in an enclosure and connected it to a different machine via the enclosure's USB cable, and it connected with no problem! A little research on iFixit pointed to a possible hard drive cable failure.

My Fix

The part arrived extremely quickly, and I followed instructions from the site and used my trusty iFixit toolkit to remove the old cable and install the new one. Once the drive was back in the Macbook, everything started up normally and worked perfectly.

My Advice

Don't assume your hard drive is lost and gone forever! Troubleshoot the problem, do your research, and don't be afraid of all those little tiny screws.