MBP HD cable bad?

I have a Macbook Pro 13" mid 2009 with a upgraded Samsung 750 GB HD. I started having trouble booting up the MB and it now will only boot off the Install disk. I tried to re-install snow leopard. That keeps failing, so I tried to erase the HD and that fails, partion same thing failure. I get input/output errors. The HD is brand new so I know that isnt the problem. Is there anyway to test the cable that connects the HD to the mother board?
The HD shows up but thats about it. I didnt want to buy a new cable unless I was fairly sure it was bad.

Thanks for any help!

Chuckv said:

The HD is brand new so I know that isnt the problem.

Click to expand...

Although rare…it's not impossible.

If you still have your old hard drive…reinstall it. If the HD cable is bad…then it won't work with your old hard drive either.

If the old hard drive + HD cable work fine…then the new hard drive IS bad!

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

If the old hard drive + HD cable work fine…then the new hard drive IS bad!

- Nick

Click to expand...

...and given my personal experience with Samsung hard drives, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.

OK, i will try that. Thanks for the suggestion.

Any other diagnostics?

I have had no luck finding the old hard drive. I would like to know if there is a way to determine if my HD cable is bad. When I boot from the system disc and go into disk utility, the 750GB Samsung HD shows up-so at least it is being recognized. I have tried to erase and then partion but I get the same error:

POSIX Reports: The operation couldn't be completed. Cannot allocate memory.

Any ideas are welcome. One interesting note with this MB Pro I have already had the HD cable go out. I was having HD errors so I brought it in to the apple store and $50 got me a new cable and the MB Pro was ok, about 18 months ago.

Buy an enclosure, install the HD, connect it to the laptop and hold down the option key while turning it on so you can boot from the enclosure.

If you're able to boot from it, the cable is bad. If you're not able to boot from it, the HD is bad.

Better than an enclosure is one of these (and should be required in any techies arsenal of troubleshooting tools):

NewerTech U3NVSPATA Universal Drive Adapter USB 3.0... in stock at OWC

or for use only at home:

Voyager by NewerTech - Hard Drive Dock for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA Devices provides high-performance and flexibility


Much easier and a whole lot faster than having to put a drive inside an enclosure for testing.

bobtomay said:

Voyager by NewerTech - Hard Drive Dock for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA Devices provides high-performance and flexibility

Click to expand...

Now that's a nice piece for the OP. He can't take advantage of USB 3.0 but the FireWire 800 one would be really nice. I didn't even know those existed but I guess that's because I only look up PATA stuff

bobtomay said:

Better than an enclosure is one of these (and should be required in any techies arsenal of troubleshooting tools):

Much easier and a whole lot faster than having to put a drive inside an enclosure for testing.

Click to expand...

I've got one of those…they work great!

- Nick

Chuckv said:

I have had no luck finding the old hard drive.

Click to expand...

When I suggested installing your old hard drive back into your computer earlier in the thread…I guess I thought that the hard drive upgrade was very recent…thus finding the old hard drive would be easy.

Do as "ChrisMan287" suggested (boot your computer externally with the 750gig HD)…and see if it will boot ok.

Good luck,

- Nick

ChrisMan287 said:

Buy an enclosure, install the HD, connect it to the laptop and hold down the option key while turning it on so you can boot from the enclosure.

Click to expand...

Great suggestion…booting the 750gig HD externally (since the OP cannot find the old HD).

- Nick

OK, so I installed Snow Leopard on an external hard drive. It installed fine. However when I power up the MBP hiolding down the option key all I get is a gray screen. I tried the restart command after booting up with the OSX disc but it booted off the disc not the external HD.

Stuck, what next?

Chuckv said:

OK, so I installed Snow Leopard on an external hard drive. It installed fine. However when I power up the MBP hiolding down the option key all I get is a gray screen. I tried the restart command after booting up with the OSX disc but it booted off the disc not the external HD.

Stuck, what next?

Click to expand...

Here are the directions for booting from an external HD (similar to suggested above):

Starting from an external USB storage device (Intel-based Macs)

By the way…is this external drive the upgraded 750gig internal drive? Because if it isn't…you're not going to learn anything.

At this point we're trying to determine if the internal HD cable or the 750gig HD is bad. By testing with a different HD externally…this will not give you any feedback on whether the internal HD cable or the 750gig HD is bad.

- Nick

p.s. By the way…realize that booting from an external HD via USB will be slower than booting from an internal HD…so you may have to hold down the option button longer than you may think….since it will take the computer longer to "recognize" that bootable external HD.

Chuckv said:

OK, so I installed Snow Leopard on an external hard drive. It installed fine. However when I power up the MBP hiolding down the option key all I get is a gray screen. I tried the restart command after booting up with the OSX disc but it booted off the disc not the external HD.

Click to expand...

Even though you're not booting from the hard drive in question, are you sure you installed it correctly? Take a look at this video for reference:
How to Install and Boot Mac OSX Leopard or Snow Leopard on an External Hard Drive - YouTube

You really should try to get an enclosure or similar tool so you can test the hard drive that you had installed.