Repairing an older 2012 pre retina MBP

[hempomatic]

I'm using a mid 2020 MBP but I also have an older machine that crapped out last year. I wasn't able to define with any certainty the cause of the failure. Here's what I DO know:

a) It boots fine and operates normally (with the hard drive removed) on my clone drive, so I THINK that would indicate the main board and microprocessor operating normally.

b) When I put the old hard drive back in and ran diagnostics on booting I got the message that said "There may be an issue with a storage device".

c) Installing a different drive, I get the blinking question mark which if I'm correct that indicates no OS found.

d) When booting to the clone drive with the same installed drive that gave me the blinking question mark, I can SEE the drive in disk utility, so I BELIEVE that would indicate that the cable attaching the internal drive to the mother board is intact and communicating.

Does this indicate that the problem with the old computer is a faulty internal drive?

ken

 

[MacInWin]

In a word, yes. Good diagnostics. You could try to reformat the faulty drive, but in my experience, once a drive shows errors, it's not trustworthy.

 

[hempomatic]

Thanks Jake. I have no intention of trying to use the drive that shows errors. As a matter of fact, it doesn't even appear on disk utility. I have a drive from another computer and I'm trying to format it. I can see it in disk utility but it shows full. I ran First Aid and no problems there. Now I'm TRYING to format it using Disk Utility on my clone drive which is running Mojave, however, it's taking forever. Is that indicating an issue? I have no issue buying a new drive, but I'm trying to prove theory that the computer can be repaired before I waste any money on it.

The drive I'm formatting is a SATA drive, but it's an older spinning drive and I'm wondering now if formatting from a clone attached via USB to a disk with a slower read/write speed may be the hold up.

 

[MacInWin]

Depends on what "forever" means! If it is a slow spinner, it may take a few minutes. If it is more than that, it could be the drive is dodgy. And if you formatted it APFS, that can take a while on a spinner. APFS is really designed for SSDs.

 

[hempomatic]

OK, So far so good. It took around 6 hours to accomplish, but I have an empty 500 gig drive. I believe this particular drive had High Sierra, but the last OS on this computer was Mojave.

Rebooted the computer, flashing "?"

LOL, NOW what? My back up clone is larger than the drive now in this computer. Can I make a bootable Mojave install from the back up clone?

 

[MacInWin]

That was to be expected. After all, you just erased the drive, so nothing to boot from. If there is more on the backup than space on the empty drive, you cannot clone back. What you CAN do is an internet recovery, install an OS on the internal, boot from it, upgrade it if needed to get whatever you want and then copy from the clone whatever you want that will fit. If the data on the clone will fit on the 500GB drive, then you can save a lot of steps and boot from it, then clone it back to the internal drive. But only if it all will fit.

Here is Apple on Internet Recovery: About macOS Recovery on Intel-based Mac computers

The "how" is later on in the article, under "If you can't start up from the macOS recovery"

 

[Slydude]

@Jake, does the time it took to format that size drive raise any red flags for you? Even on a slow spinner, it seems a bit long for that size drive. Using it as a "test drive" to check things out and verify suspicions is fine, but I'm not sure I would trust it long term.

 

[MacInWin]

Yes, it seemed long to me. Sometimes when drives fail they signal the impending fail with slow responses. Disk Utility's test only checks that a read or write was successful, not how many tries it took to make it. The firmware on a drive will try many times to finish a read/write before giving up and sending an error back. So, although it did successfully format, I think it's signaling that it is having issues.

 

[hempomatic]

Oh well, best laid plans ............

This is getting SO convoluted. The drive I intend to use has been erased and formatted. I hooked it up to my computer like I would a thumb drive. It reads and write fine. When I install it in the old computer (a mid 2012 MBP) it wants to install Mavericks. Is that in the firmware? Can I install Mojave or do I need to install Mavericks and upgrade to Mojave?

How SHOULD the drive I want to use be formatted?

When I create a bootable drive on my current computer, I can only make it bootable to Catalina (my current OS). The dead computer was running Mojave. I do NOT want to run Catalina. I'm not a fan. If there was a way to easily put Mojave on my new computer, I'd do that in a heartbeat.

What's confusing me is that the old computer boots to the clone drive fine. What do I have to do to the internal drive so the computer will boot to it. Is there any way to simply pre-install Mojave on the internal drive?

 

[MacInWin]

It wants to install Mavericks via the Internet Recovery because that is what the machine originally came with, I would bet. From there you can upgrade to Mojave or whatever you want and the machine can handle.

The internal drive should be formatted HFS+ (that is, Mac OS Extended - Journaled). That is for the Mavericks install. Upgrading to Mojave may change that, but Mavericks won't understand anything but HFS+.

 

[hempomatic]

OK, narrowing things down .......

The hard drive I intend to use has been formatted correctly and when hooked up to my new computer via SATA cable, tests, reads and writes normally using graphic files as a test. It does NOT however appear in the install OS dialog (install over internet option) when installed in the computer I'm trying to salvage.

There are 3 possibilities. 1) faulty drive, 2) faulty cable to mother board, 3) faulty mother board. There is actually a 4th possibility, but I'm holding off on incompetence until it's been proven.

I have a new drive and cable on their way. A new board is not yet an option.

WHY am I going through this? I do love my mid 2020 MBP, it HOWEVER I HATE the fact that it is not user serviceable. I'm trying to limit it's use to the things it's best at, like photo editing and avoiding it's use for the mundane stuff like Email and Facebook. That's where repairing the old computer comes in. Even running Mavericks it can perform the mundane stuff. I don't have an issue with waiting an extra second or two for an email to load.