2009 MacBook Pro Hard Drive Cable Replacement

Mijn probleem

My daughter's 2009 MacBook Pro started freezing and having difficulty booting. She had a good SuperDuper backup so I swapped out the hard drive but there were errors and problems trying to format the new drive. A Google search indicated a potential bad cable. I turned to iFixit for a guide and replacement.

Mijn oplossing

The part arrived from iFixit within four days of ordering. Nice service! Replacing the cable took only a few minutes. Rebooted from the external backup. The new drive showed up fine and we cloned the backup to the new drive. Rebooted after the restore. All back to normal.

Mijn advies

I did test the old drive and it was not working. Somehow the old drive and the cable both went bad. Not sure why. Maybe heat? So replace both if you have trouble getting a new drive to format.

This is a super easy repair. Just make sure you have the proper #00 phillips screwdriver to the remove the screws on the bottom of the MacBook. If you have to replace the drive as well, you'll also need a T6 Torx screwdriver.

The iFixit guides cover the tools you'll need.