Trying to diagnose my laptop issues

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PR3CiSiON

Commendable
May 13, 2016
2
0
1,510
So I'm working on a Macbook Pro 13" Early 2011, and it appears as though the hard drive is shot.

I have reformatted it to NTFS on my PC, and it is not working on there either. I've tried a lot more than that, but the hard drive is definitely done.

In order to diagnose the laptop, I plugged in a different hard drive, formatted to HFS+. It was a 3.5" HDD, instead of a 2.5". So, I kept the cover off and plugged it in. But the laptop would not even read that there was a hard drive plugged in.

Is there more to this problem than just the hard drive? Any other reasons the laptop wouldn't read the good hard drive?
 
Solution
SuperSoph_WD
Hey there, PR3CiSiON!

Can you please share how exactly you have connected that 3.5" HDD to your laptop? If you mean externally via a SATA-to-USB cable, you'd need an additional power supply (AC adapter) to get the HDD started. The USB ports or just the SATA connector inside the laptop do not provide enough power for a 3.5" hard drive. You won't be able to use a 3.5" drive internally with a laptop, they are designed to be used in desktop rigs. They usually are physically connected there not only to the motherboard, but also to the power supply unit (PSU) which is how the desktop HDD works. I'd strongly recommend you consider replacing it with a 2.5" mobile laptop storage drive instead, if you wish to resolve your laptop issue.

Hope I...
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

Glorious
Jul 30, 2014
6,758
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Hey there, PR3CiSiON!

Can you please share how exactly you have connected that 3.5" HDD to your laptop? If you mean externally via a SATA-to-USB cable, you'd need an additional power supply (AC adapter) to get the HDD started. The USB ports or just the SATA connector inside the laptop do not provide enough power for a 3.5" hard drive. You won't be able to use a 3.5" drive internally with a laptop, they are designed to be used in desktop rigs. They usually are physically connected there not only to the motherboard, but also to the power supply unit (PSU) which is how the desktop HDD works. I'd strongly recommend you consider replacing it with a 2.5" mobile laptop storage drive instead, if you wish to resolve your laptop issue.

Hope I was helpful. Let me know if you have any additional questions!
SuperSoph_WD
 
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