Strange problem on macbook pro A1278, not recognizing hard drive

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Yesterday I turned on my mac, and a flashing folder with a question mark came up. I restarted while holding down cmd+R, and later while holding down the Option key. But in no cases the start disk would appear. I thought it meant the hard drive was dead, so I inserted one from my old macbook, and went through the same process – but again the mac didn't recognize the hard drive existed – no matter what I did. I went back and forth with the two hard drives, trying to start the mac up with them – and then after 3 hours the mac suddenly recognized the hard drives when I inserted them, and I could use my computer again.

But then, this morning while surfing the internet, the computer froze / crashed. When I opened it up again, the flashing question mark had reappeared, and I have not been able to use my mac since. I took the hard drive out and inserted it again a few times, but it has not helped.

My mac has for long often been freezing and crashing, but never before opened up with a question mark. It generally also opens up very slowly.

Does anybody know what the problem might be and how I can try to fix it? I assume it's not the hard drive, but something else that is not working.
 

Slydude

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M1 MacMini 16 GB - Sequoia, iPhone 14 Pro Max, 2015 iMac 16 GB Monterey
If it has been slowing down for some time I might suspect a filing hard drive but that would not explain the issues with the second drive? When you were connecting/reconnecting things did you check the drive cable? I had that behavior a while back and it turned out to be a loose cable. I was getting an intermittent connection so sometimes everything worked fine then suddenly nothing.

BTW which MacBook Pro is this? The A1278 designation covers several MBP models.
 
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Thank you for your reply, Slydude!

The cable does not feel loose, but I suspect it's broken, so I ordered a new one. A user on amazon described a similar problem in a review of the cable, and he/she had solved it by changing the cable. I should receive it on Friday, and hopefully this will solve it.
It is a MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.5 13" Mid-2012, Model A1278 (EMC 2554*).
I read somewhere that the cable was bad in many macs of this model.
 

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