Exactly what the doctor ordered!

My Problem

The Mac kept having spinning beach balls and locking up hard. Sometimes the computer wouldn't boot, just showing the folder with a flashing question mark. All signs of a bad hard drive, but pulling the drive and connecting to another Mac showed the drive was working just fine. After some research, I found this particular gen of Mac often suffers from defective SATA cables, and it fit all the symptoms.

My Fix

Repair went great! Pretty easy to swap out the part, and the iFixit part was exactly like the old cable, so it fit like a glove. The computer works perfectly now, no more drive issues! I'm a happy camper! :-)

My Advice

If you suffer similar issues with your 2011 Macbook Pro, please give this a try!