Macbook Pro M1 Hard Drive

[Carmina Piette]

Ive been fixing Macs professionally (not through Apple) for well over a decade now. By far the most common thing I do is replace failing hard drives. While Apple's own tools (hardware test, Disk Utility) do almost nothing to positively confirm a failing hard drive, there are several other tools (SoftRaid, SMART Utility) that can read the SMART data and tell you for sure that a drive is failing. So unlike the Genius bar, I can quickly diagnose a bad hard drive without having to infer the problem through symptoms.

But one problem that I've noticed really being on the rise lately, is a failing hard drive cable in MacBook Pros. That's the little flat ribbon cable that connects the hard drive to the logic board. It also connects the sleep light. This is a much harder problem to diagnose, because it generally acts just like a system with a failing hard drive, but the drive will pass a real SMART test with flying colors. You might think "come on, how often does a simple cable really go bad?" Well, I've never had a traditional desktop style SATA cable go bad. But I've replaced a lot of these drive cables and I'm doing another one tomorrow. I never really know if it's going to fix the problem or not though...

... because, there's no way to directly confirm the cable is the problem. I know all about Apple service procedure. I know the official way to diagnose a problem is to start replacing parts until the computer is fixed, and that last part was your problem. But that's not how things go in the out-of-warranty world of independent Mac repair.

So I got to thinking. Computers with bad cables don't crash, or freeze. They just hang for a while randomly, then come back. JUST like a hard drive with lots of bad blocks. So what could be causing this? The only thing I can think of is SATA bus errors that only happen intermittently (on a scale relative to the amount of i/o calls a hard drive does). If that is the case, then there must be SOME kind of utility somewhere that can see these errors? There are plenty of utilities out that that have fancy 3D interfaces, but do absolutely nothing (tech tool etc). But there are a few tools that the Pros use that actually DO stuff. DiskWarrior and SMART Utility are the main tools. If I could find something that can somehow easily and definitively sniff out these bad SATA cables, that would make my life a whole lot easier.

I just inherited a mid-2012 13" A1278 which previous owner said she hardly used in recent years because it got so slow. After resetting the system, wiping the drive and upping the memory from the original base 4gb to 12gb, I noticed a definite improvement. But still really slow and sort of hanging up when installing new OS and other large apps. Even now on MS Office 2016 and Final Draft I get a lot of beachballing. I'm thinking I should try swapping out the Hard Drive Cable and maybe put in a spare SSD I've got lying around while I'm there.

So the cable iFixit sells says it can replace both. But it's pretty costly at $44 (with bracket). I can find some others (with bracket) on Amazon for half of that. But those specifically say they are EITHER for the 821-1480-A cables OR the 821-2049-A cable. Not both. Should I just go with the newer version 821-2049-A?

You also mentioned that Apple modified the HDD mount so it would prevent the case from pressing on the HDD cable. Even tho you said it didn't eradicate the issue, is that something that I can easily accomplish by replacing both brackets?

Brue computing posted an interesting Video on Youtube. The proposition was that the SATA cable problems in certain MacBooks was caused by abrasion against the machined inside of the aluminum case. Their solution? RED TAPE!

Do you ever notice any physical wear on the cable? One youtube "fix" I saw involved simply insulating the cable with a piece of tape from the MBP's case where it had actually scraped a tiny portion of the very thin insulation off.

I had kept the three old cables so I decided to find out what had gone wrong with them. There are 5 thin copper tacks, which connect to the 7 pin side of the SATA connector. I used a multimeter to do a continuity test on these tracks. I found that on all three cables one of these tracks had broken at the same place. The cable does a tight right angle bend at the point it passes over the optic drive. The cable flexes at this point and eventually one of the copper tracks breaks. I found that if I flexed the cable at this point the track would make and break contact.

On later versions of the MacBook Pro Apple modified the HDD mount so it would prevent the case from pressing on the HDD cable. They also introduced an upgraded cable 821-2049-A, which replaced the original 821-1480-A. Unfortunately, upgraded cable still eventually breaks. This time I have taped the cable to the optic drive to try and prevent it flexing. Time will tell if this helps. The cables are quite easy to replace and I keep a few in stock.

One way of partially checking the problem is to externally connect the HDD (e.g. use a dock or SATA to USB cable) and see if the MacBook boots correctly. You need to hold the alt key down when starting the MacBook to be able to select the external drive.

My MBP Mid 2012 shows a question mark in a gray folder (on white screen) when fired-up.

Thought it could be a HD failure. Invested in a brand new Samsung EVO 850 SSD and same problem occurred until I learned about the famous "Flat wire A1278" issue.

After replacement of the flat wire (with felt protection to prevent further damage) and entire recovery, everything was great, super fast booting, app opening in a blink of an eye, me happy.

End of 2017:

Same question mark in folder appears again when firing-up the machine.

Assuming the SSD was faulty, I swapped it against the original HD and Boom, the machine works fine again, well much slower but still.

Since it has a 5 year guaranty, I brought the SSD to a Samsung Service Center (Bangkok, Thailand) and 10 days after, they declared the SSD is actually fine and might just have needed a firmware update. Ok why not after all...

They printed out many screenshots of the Samsung diagnostic software showing that all was in the green and one last shot showing the SSD up and running in a Mac environment connected via USB port (attached pictures)...

"USB port connected" and "internally on a MPB connected" is something quite different... anyways...

Today,

I put the Samsung SSD back in and even if it appeared in the list of drives under Recovery mode, the SSD cannot be either verified, repaired, erased/formatted as it always ended up with the same error message (see attached picture).

It was pretty clear to me that your claim about a damaged connector was about the "cable" (SATA female receptacle) side and not the drive side. The drive side has the "flat wiping contacts" that Grant was discussing. The connector side has a receptacle with bent spring contacts that can be damaged with improper force. Here's a picture of a SATA receptacle. Obviously it's not the specific MacBook Pro SATA connector, which is custom made for Apple, but Apple's connector has bent spring contacts (that can be damaged) like pretty much every other SATA receptacle.

Thanks for that. Out of interest I took a photo of the connector on a new Apple cable. There is not much difference. The interesting thing is that connector contacts on a broken cables I bought on ebay doesn't appear to be gold plated. That cable only lasted 2 months so I wonder if it was genuine Apple cable.

I got the impression that Apple had accepted there was something of a design fault with this cable and that at one time they had a policy of replacing it for free and although that policy had expired, as a gesture of good will, they were prepared to honour it in my case.

The whole set of laws/regulation under the EU/UK seem more or less toothless. Doesn't the statutory 5 to 6 year warranty in the UK say that the defect had to be present at delivery? So something just wearing out after the warranty is over doesn't apply. Also, the responsibility is on the seller past the manufacturer's limited warranty. If it wasn't purchased directly from Apple, they could disavow any responsibility if they chose.

Any defect or non-conformity of goods with the contract which becomes apparent within 6 months of delivery are presumed to have existed at the time of delivery. After the expiry of this 6 month period, the burden to prove that the defect or non-conformity of goods with the contract existed on delivery generally shifts to the consumer.

Hi I am facing this problem too. I have a '11 macbook pro 13" and replaced HDD at first (having two of them I did it effortless and moneyless), then without any fix decided to buy another HDD cable and problem seemed to be fixed. I faced the same issue again, still after the same amount of time (avg 3 weeks) so the flat cable failed again. I am currently at the second cable bought and decided to not go for any buy again by now.

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