How I saved my daughters MacBook Pro filled with nail polish remover

Mijn probleem

My daughter spilled a lot of nail polish remover into her MacBook Pro keyboard, making it turn off immediately. Hereafter she used a hair dryer to dry it, melting 3 keyboard buttons.

The Mac would not boot hereafter, and the disk tool could not format any of 3 disks I tried. I made a full hardware test on the Mac, finding no problems. I tested the hard disk in an USB enclosure, and it worked fine.

Using Google I found out, that many people have solved this kind of problem by changing the SATA cable. Even though I find the price for this SATA cable extremely high, I decided to buy it to find out, if the Mac should end as spare parts, or could be used again.

Mijn oplossing

The repair is extremely easy. Remove the bottom plate, remove a few screws, and the hard disk and cable can be removed. Mount the new SATA cable and the disk, and refit the bottom plate. I think it took less than 10 minutes.

After power on, the disk could be formatted. I then connected to my WiFi, and restored it from my TimeCapsule backup. It has been working perfectly ever after :-)

Mijn advies

I have nothing to add to iFixit's adequate guide. I believe changing the SATA cable is one of the easiest tasks to perform. And the $100 is a good price to regain a MacBook Pro, even though I find it very pricy.