Serious trouble

[Lady Lola]

A bit ago, my 13" Macbook Pro, purchased June 2010, started to have problems. It would freeze up, and I could do nothing with it but move around the colorful spinning cursor. I tried to reformat the hard drive, and this worked, but once things got past the intro movie everything went very, very slowly and it eventually froze up again before I could get through selecting my settings and setting up my user account.

My friend told me that it was probably my HDD, and I could replace it with a SSD which would fix these problems and greatly increase the speed of my computer. So I ordered one and installed it, but the SSD was not recognized by disk utility. So I connected my external HDD via usb and installed OSX on there so that I could at least read my textbooks (pdfs) while trying to solve the issue. Even with this setup, though, I am having issues where the computer will randomly freeze and I am forced to shut it down by holding the power button. I'm afraid that by doing this I am going to break it, and I have had to many, many times trying to get this fixed.

What do you think might be wrong with my laptop? How can I go about solving it? I do not have AppleCare, and would prefer to fix the issue myself instead of paying Apple some ridiculous price.

Thank you.

 

[Lady Lola]

If it helps, this is the SSD I purchased:

Newegg.com - Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CW120G3K5 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

[Lady Lola]

Also: the original HDD does seem to be failing. When I installed it back into the laptop and tried to install OSX onto it, the installation process went on for hours and it eventually froze. The usb HDD, while unreliable, does work better than the internal HDD.

 

[Shootist]

Ok your HDD is failing and you bought a SSD to replace it.
When you installed that SSD Disk Utility didn't see it.

How did you run disk utility without having a OS on the computer?

Did you boot the computer from the original install DVD that came with the system?
If not that is what you need to do.

 

[Lady Lola]

Ok your HDD is failing and you bought a SSD to replace it.
When you installed that SSD Disk Utility didn't see it.

How did you run disk utility without having a OS on the computer?

Did you boot the computer from the original install DVD that came with the system?
If not that is what you need to do.

Yes, that is what I did.

 

[Shootist]

There have been many reports of the HDD cable going bad.
So it might not be your hard drive but the cable that is bad and that is why the SSD is not being seen.

Do you have a way to connect the SSD to a USB port? Like a SATA to USB adapter?

If you do then do that and boot the system from the install DVD and see it it see the SSD on the USB port.
If it does you can then install the OS on the SSD and use it that way until you get a new cable.

 

[Lady Lola]

There have been many reports of the HDD cable going bad.
So it might not be your hard drive but the cable that is bad and that is why the SSD is not being seen.

Do you have a way to connect the SSD to a USB port? Like a SATA to USB adapter?

If you do then do that and boot the system from the install DVD and see it it see the SSD on the USB port.
If it does you can then install the OS on the SSD and use it that way until you get a new cable.

No, I don't have one of those adapters. Do you know how much they cost?

Also: that does not explain why I am crashing while running off of the external HDD. Could it be a motherboard issue? :/

 

[Shootist]

They cost about $17.00

Is the external you are crashing off of a clone of the internal drive or a clean install of the OS.

If it was a clone/Copy of the internal then the same errors/corruption that was on the internal was carried over to the external when it was cloned and or copied.

If it is a clean install on the external then you may have a logic board (Motherboard) problem.
If you have updated your computers firmware you may be able to boot the computer from the Apple internet servers and run the Apple Hardware Test. You do that by holding down either just the "d" key or the "Option+d" key when the system starts.

 

[Lady Lola]

They cost about $17.00

Is the external you are crashing off of a clone of the internal drive or a clean install of the OS.

If it was a clone/Copy of the internal then the same errors/corruption that was on the internal was carried over to the external when it was cloned and or copied.

If it is a clean install on the external then you may have a logic board (Motherboard) problem.
If you have updated your computers firmware you may be able to boot the computer from the Apple internet servers and run the Apple Hardware Test. You do that by holding down either just the "d" key or the "Option+d" key when the system starts.

It was a clean install, and using the external drive is much better than using the old HDD. It freezes a lot, but not as frequently and nothing is sluggish like it was. I have not updated the firmware, is there some other way to run the hardware test? I can use the laptop like normal, but it won't let me shut it down when I do and it will freeze after a few hours of use.

 

[Shootist]

Did you try to run the Online AHT by holding down the D (no caps) key?

You need to Hold it down for a while, not just for a few seconds.

 

[Lady Lola]

Yes, I just tried that. Holding down d nor d+cmd did anything, booted normally. How do I update my firmware?

 

[Shootist]

You have to download it from the Apple Download website.

Apple - Support - Downloads

Then run it, IE double click on it.

Or you can run Software Update and it there is a new one for your model it should come up.

 

[Lady Lola]

That is strange, I downloaded the firmware update for macbook pro and there is an Alert message stating that the software is not supported on my system.

EDIT: oh never mind, that is the wrong macbook pro model

EDIT 2: the firmware update requires Lion, and I am still using Snow Leopard. Was this hardware test introduced with lion?

EDIT 3: Hehe it's on the additional applications disk, I will install that now

 

[Lady Lola]

Well, the test said that there were no problems found. What does it test, exactly? It only took three minutes, even doing the extended test.. I think because it doesn't detect the SSD inside

 

[Lady Lola]

I am going to purchase one online now, no stores in my town were selling them. Is this what I need?

Newegg.com - SABRENT SATA-C35U Serial ATA (SATA) to USB 2.0 Cable Converter Adapter

I thought they had 2 usb connectors?

 

[Shootist]

I am going to purchase one online now, no stores in my town were selling them. Is this what I need?

Newegg.com - SABRENT SATA-C35U Serial ATA (SATA) to USB 2.0 Cable Converter Adapter

I thought they had 2 usb connectors?

Well it's OK but I use this one.

Newegg.com - Vantec 2.5"/3.5"/5.25" SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter - Model CB-ISATAU2

It does all types of drives, not just SATA and it's cheaper. I just got this exact model to go along with the one I've had for years.

 

[Lady Lola]

Thank you