macbook can't find its hard drive, but the hard drive is fine

My girlfriend has a macbook. its about a year old. Her friend broke her screen and i just replaced it. So after replacing the screen, I tried to startup the computer and it couldn't find its system software(flashing question mark icon on folder).

I tried to reinstall the OS from her original discs. But, when trying to pick a drive to install to, no hard drive shows up(no hard drive shows up in disk utility, and an extended apple hardware test shows no problems)

So, i thought, wow, just my luck, her hard drive is bad too. I bought a replacement at best buy today (320 gig as opposed to the 160 she had before). I install that hard drive and still the same problem, no hard drive shows up in system profiler, or disk utility etc.

Then, i thought, well maybe the old hard drive was fine after all and i went and tested it at a friends house and the old hard drive was perfectly intact and still had all the old data on it. So, I have two different hard drives, both seemingly in perfect operating condition and still i cannot get the macbook to admit there is a hard drive connected to it.


Does anyone know what could be going on?

please help!

You said you changed the display for her. Did you follow the step by step procedures as given at the ifixit web site or some other step by step?

Either way, you need to go back over your work and make sure all cables are attached. Be especially alert for the molex connector on the logic board that accepts the hard drive ribbon cable. Make sure it's snug and that you didn't accidentally break or bend any pins when removing it and re-attaching. Check both ends - but be careful not to break anything.

Let us know.

Regards.

I actually had the same idea and followed the wires that went from the hard drive to the mother board, and found that connection to the motherboard was in fact loose. I gently snapped it back in and threw in the original hard drive and I am currently posting from the macbook


I came back to let everyone know that, as I had seen a lot of similar posts where people did repair work and may have unintentionally severed such a connection unknowingly or not completely snapped it back in to place.


Either way thanks for the help, it was in fact the problem but I had already figured it out


I will definitely come back here with any future macbook or any other mac product issues

Glad to hear you're back up and running. Visit us often and have fun. And... thanks for posting back to let us know.

Regards.