I got a 2011 MacBook Pro and had a Samsung 840 Pro installed running Mountain Lion, then Mavericks for about a year without any problems. Without any apparent reason the MBP just wouldn't boot from the SSD anymore, reinserting the old HDD worked instantly.
After playing around a bit I made the following observations about the MBP:
- won't boot from the SSD even after cloning the HDD or making a clean reinstall
- not even able to get to the boot menu when the SSD is installed
- can boot from the SSD when it is connected via USB and the HDD is used to get to the boot menu
- cannot boot from any other SSD (tried one from another MBP and also a completely new one)
Any ideas?
Best Answer
I don't know how it worked without issues for over a year... but the culprit is probably the drive cable. To put a long story short, the interface is SATA III on the motherboard, it's SATA III on the SSD, so they will talk SATA III.
But if your MBP shipped with a SATA II HDD, it most likely came with an interconnect cable only rated for SATA II.
I wouldn't have thought this would be that big of an issue (I sort of thought the difference was like the difference between a CAT 5 and CAT 5e UTP) but apparently with the models of SSD's on the market right now and their throughput, it causes an issue.
I couldn't tell you how to determine if the cable's the "updated" SATA III version or not when shopping for parts, but I do know that this one is.