Lost ability to recognize hard drive? Help would be appreciated.

[Keleryn]

So, I have a 2010 MacBook Pro 13.3".

A while ago, it stopped booting up. It would go to a white screen and stay there.

I tried booting into Recovery Mode, to no avail.
I attempted booting into Safe Mode, with no luck.
I gave booting into Single-User Mode a shot, but that too was futile.

I decided to go for a clean reinstall of OSX, but when I put the discs in, the list of available HDDs to install to was empty.

Thinking my HDD was dead, I went and bought a new one.

It failed to find the new drive as well.

If anyone has encountered this before, and can give me a fix, it would be appreciated. Some hardware inside the machine must have died on me if it's not recognizing that there's an HDD attached to it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Kaveman]

Harddrives are not user serviceable parts, I suggest you take it to an AppleCare Service Centre near you.

 

[Keleryn]

Harddrives are not user serviceable parts, I suggest you take it to an AppleCare Service Centre near you.

I'm not trying to service the hard drive itself... I've already bought a new one and replaced it. I'm trying to figure out why my laptop won't recognize that there's a hard drive hooked up to it when I try to reinstall OSX.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

When you boot from the disc, open Disc Utility (under Utilities in the menu) and if your HD shows up in the left panel, you need to select it and partition it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) before you can install your Mac OS X version onto it.

 

[Keleryn]

When you boot from the disc, open Disc Utility (under Utilities in the menu) and if your HD shows up in the left panel, you need to select it and partition it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) before you can install your Mac OS X version onto it.

Again, the list is empty. It gives me no options to install to, and nothing appears on Disc Utility. This is a brand new HDD that I bought assuming the old one was dead when the same thing happened.

I was told to try buying a new SATA cable for it and hope that was the problem. If you can think of any other problems that this could potentially be before I do that, it would be appreciated.

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

Dig around on the Apple web site or better phone an Apple store and cross reference your Mac model number with comparable hard drives.
As some models are apparently only designed to use a 250 or 320 gb 5400 rpm drive. Anything faster or larger isn't recognized.

 

[Keleryn]

That's what I bought.

WD Blue Notebook 320GB 5400 RPM.

 

[oldscribe]

Hi Keleryn,

Personally feel your old HD may be OK, so would defiantly book a GB appointment and see what they say.

 

[Cory Cooper]

I was told to try buying a new SATA cable for it

I have seen that many times...the SATA cable going bad on numerous similar MBs/MBPs from that era.

oldscribe is correct...the Genius Bar should be able to tell you pretty easily.

C