New HD doesn't appear at start up? Help?

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I had just recently replaced my HD with a WD 750GB 7200RPM drive on my Mid-2009 MacBook Pro (MBP5,5) however it doesn't appear at start up. I had trouble before; it never showed up in my Installer's Disk Utility until I put it into an external enclosure. I assumed that it had something to do with the connection but when I put it in my OLD drive, it worked perfectly fine and showed up. But anyway, I installed OS X on it while it was in the enclosure and when it finished I had installed it back into my laptop but it still doesn't show up. I am currently ON my laptop with the HD connected via external enclosure but I wish to put it back in internally. Does anyone have any idea what the problem is? I formated it and partitioned it properly, I even went as far as updating my EFI but it said my laptop didn't need the update.


If it matters, I'm currently on 10.5.7, only because I had used the installer CD.

And also, my old HD is pretty much gone, the only reason I still use it, is to simply see if appears or not. When it does in fact appear, it tells me that wiring isn't the problem. If that makes sense?
 

chscag

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If the old hard drive works OK in your MBP and the new one doesn't show up when connected then... it either has to be something wrong with the new drive itself or a problem with the SATA connector or controller on the new drive. I would return it and ask for another drive.
 
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This HD is actually a replacement. The first one was doing the same thing and so I had a new one sent to me. Since t works perfectly fine through an external, does that mean the connector is ok?
 

chscag

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This HD is actually a replacement. The first one was doing the same thing and so I had a new one sent to me. Since t works perfectly fine through an external, does that mean the connector is ok?

If that's the second one you tried and it's doing the same thing (wish you had said that in your first post), something else is going on. Again, since the old hard drive is OK and it's just these two new ones, that tells us your MBP is OK.

And the fact that the new drive works OK from a USB enclosure tells us that at least the drive is OK internally.

Look inside the hard drive cavity in your MBP. There should be two rubber like insulators or spacers - one for the left side and the other for the right side of the drive. If those spacers are not in place the drive will not line up properly when placed in the cavity and the SATA connector on the drive will not match the connector in the MBP.

It's possible that one or more of the spacers is sticking to your old drive instead of remaining in the cavity. Post back and let us know what you find.
 
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Are you talking about the black rubber holding down the four screws on the HD? If so, everything looks fine.
Or are you talking about the 2 'spikes' on the connector that line up with HD when connected? If so, they're perfectly in tact.

Sorry, just making sure Im looking at the right thing.



(I now should mention that my laptop running on the new HD, it seems very slow and laggy. I continuously get beach balls and have to turn it off. just started to happen)
 

chscag

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Yeah, it looks like you have all the bases covered. I don't know what else to tell you unless you were unlucky enough to get two bad drives in a row. Maybe it's time to try another drive of a different make and model?
 
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I'm not sure if this has something to do with it but I had both HD side by side and there is a slight difference at the connection area. The WD has an extra 4 .. I don't know how to describe it other than an extra slot?

But besides that, do you have any recommendations of what drives are best?
 

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Those extra 4 pins is probably a jumper block.
 

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