Mac not reading internal hard drive, running from external

I have a Macbook Pro, that stopped working on me.
After some tinkering around, I was able to boot up after it crashed, but only by removing the hard drive and accessing it through the USB ports.
Two part question...
A- How do I see if the computer is recognizing the internal hard drive? (I purchased a new one and placed it in the unit)
B- How do I clone the old hard drive, now external, to the new hard drive?
I also was not able to partition the new hard drive yet
thanks!

If the drive mounts through a USB, it should be OK. The cable connecting the HD to the logic board inside the system may be faulty. That service/part runs around $75 and can be had at the Genius Bar. Or find other sources: https://www.google.com/#q=macbook+pro+hard+drive+ribbon+cable&revid=1133110092

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Hi everyone,
My Macbook pro(2010) is not reading the internal Hard Drive. At first I thought it to be a hard drive gone bad, so i bought a new hard drive. My macbook is still not reading the Hard Drive. I am able to use the original hard drive through a external(USB) connection. Also, when the macbook turns, there is a redelling sound. Can anyone offer me any suggestions to what the problem might be?

It sounds like the internal cable connecting the HDD to the logic board is improperly connected or faulty. An appointment at an Apple genius bar might be a good option. The repair should not be too expensive.
Ciao.

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Can I clone and transfer from the internal hard drive to an external hard drive ?

I got an intel duo iMac, the machine is very good even if it is almost 3 years old. But with the internal hard drive having 320 Gb I am running out of hard drive space. I have looked into changing the internal hard drive but that involves having to send the machine away to have that done. So I was wondering if I could just transfer all the Mac OS X and all the applications and settings within three user accounts to say a 2 TB external hard drive, and boot from that, using cloning software.
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John,
USB should be fine for general computer use, but media may add a little too much for the sustained rate that USB2 provides. In a previous career I did a lot of video editing. Firewire was much preferred in that task because of its stability at higher rates. I can see why the SuperDuper! people might suggest it.
When I cloned the wife's iMac, I had replaced the HDD on the MacBook Pro with a USB pocket drive that I've kept the original MacBook's installation mounted on. I've booted directly to that external drive, so you should be okay if you can make the clone across the USB. When I cloned the wife's machine I booted the MacBook Pro with a fresh HDD in Firewire target mode and connected it as an external Firewire 800 drive. Firewire 800 is much faster, but you'll need the cable and everything to be right.
Firewire has a better reputation among people running a lot of media from their drive. I would suggest that you try and get an external drive kit that can support both. I think your iMac supports both firewire 400 AND firewire 800 along with the 3 USB2 ports. I'm guessing based on my wife's 24" imac. The fastest would be the Firewire 800, but that standard is about to be pushed aside in both cases.
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I have three internal hard drives, one for system, the other two for data storage. While permorming a search on one of the data drives i clicked the "X" to the right of the spinning wheel on the bottom right of the search window to stop the search but the computer froze (wheel kept spinning). I then went through the dock and quit all applications, except for InDesign which wasn't responding to force quit.
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where did it go?
G4 Mac OS X (10.4.9) Dual 1.25 GHz, 2MB L3 cache each, 2GB DDR SDRAM

no it doesn't show up at all in those either.
Hmm. Then that sounds like the interface to the drive isn't even talking. You could try opening up the computer and making sure the cables are all connected firmly (of course, it should be off).
here's the log:
Nothing here looks too alarming.
Apr 21 09:51:00 Greg-Simpsons-Computer webdavd[220]:
network_mount: WebDAV protocol not supported; file:
mount.tproj/webdav_network.c; line: 2702
Apr 21 09:51:07 Greg-Simpsons-Computer webdavd[245]:
network_mount: WebDAV protocol not supported; file:
mount.tproj/webdav_network.c; line: 2702
Was your iDisk mounted at the time? Or another WebDAV server?
Apr 21 09:51:20 Greg-Simpsons-Computer
diskarbitrationd[39]: mdsyncServer [193]:28715 not
responding.
Apr 21 09:51:20 Greg-Simpsons-Computer
diskarbitrationd[39]: mds [171]:28163 not
responding.
Hmm. These are part of Spotlight, but they don't really give any clues, just that they weren't responding. Which might be because the drive disappered during your search.
Waiting for MirrorAgent to launch and respond to
CFMessagePortCreateRemote(). [186]
Again, part of iDisk.
2007-04-21 09:52:41.360 SyndicationAgent[252]
WARNING: BestCalendarDateFromString - can't
interpret: 'Sat
that last line then repeats a lot of times
Nothing to worry about. It's badly formatted date strings from some iTunes RSS feeds. They're default bookmarks in a couple of places, which is why you see them sometimes.
2007-04-21 11:13:12.192 Pro Tools M-Powered Demo[352]
CFLog (21): GetDiskFragment returns -2804 for
<Product Registration><Product
Registration><AWSCommonSymbols.dll> when trying to
load /Library/Application Support/Product
Registration.app/Contents/MacOS/Product Registration
This is ProTools trying to load a piece of code. If ProTools is working, then I'd say it's nothing to worry about. Error -2804 is "specified fragment not found", but if it handles it okay, then it could just be an informational message.
Adobe LM Service: Started
AdobeLM Service
Just the Adobe license manager telling you it started. Nothing to worry about.
Unfortunately, I don't see anything helpful here. It's just like it disappeared (or never existed) as far as the OS is concerned. If you can find your original disks that came with the computer, you could try running the hardware test and see if it kicks up any errors, either with a drive or a drive controller on the motherboard.
charlie

Will not recognize internal hard drive

I have a strange problem with a 2009 MacBookPro. It started acting "strange" for the user over the past few months. By "strange" I mean it would freeze, or fail to boot, or sometimes even restart without any reason. Now, it gets even stranger. Tried the standard things, RAM reseat, replace, check for loose connectors etc. It would fail to boot when the hard drive was connected internally. Then it would give a kernal panic and fail to even recognize a hard drive as being installed. Did a PRam reset, SMC reset and even the power off/control key to try to reset the open firmware. No sucess with anything. This is a suystem with an internal battery.
Yet, when using this exact same hard drive on an external USB drive connection, it would boot fine. Next tried it in Terminal mode to boot up another MBP. Failed to boot. When the 2nd MBP was booted from its internal drive and the suspect machine was plugged in as a Firewire (Terminal mode on "strange" computer) an External Firewire Drive appeared on the desktop, then a few seconds later, an identical copy of the first Ext FW drive appeared. This went on with evenbtually six copies of the one single Terminal booted hard drive appearing on the desktop of the second computer. None of the six drives would open or even allow any indiccation of what they contained.
Tried to partition the hard drive when it was put back into the internal slot but it would not unmount and failed to partition. The same thinmg happened when trying to erase it. Connected the hard drive via USB to a Windows 7 machine and used it to erase both the Recovery and Main partitions from the ard drive. Both were erased but the EFI partition could not be erased or cleaned. Put this same hard drive, as an external USB, into a very old XP machine and there the EFI partition was removed when a "Clean" command was sent via command line.
I then took the, now totally erased hard drive, and put it back into the computer as an internal drive and booted the computer from a 10.8 USB stick so I could partition the now empty hard drive. The drive was not even recognized as being present. Did the same thing, but using the USB external connection for that same hard drive. It partitioned and then formatted with 10.8.1 (what was on the USB stick). After the OS was installed, the computer would boot using this newly created OS when connected as an external USB drive. Put the drive back in as the internal drive. Got a Kernal Panic. Forced shutdown and retried. Noi kernal Panic but drive was not even recognized. Pulled the drive from internal and put it back into the external USB and tried booting. System would not recognize the drive as even being present.
I then erased and cleaned the drive in the XP machine again and then, using the USB connection on the second computer reinstalled 10.8 from the USB. When I tried the now newly created software again, the same thing happened as listed above. 2nd machine booted fine on the drive as a USB, "Strange" machine booted fine using the drive as an external USB, Kernal Panicked then would not be recognized in the "Strange" machine.
It appears that when the drive is connected internally. it not only does not have the OS software recognized but will rewrite something in the drive that makes it impossible to be recognized by any Apple. My first thought was that the EFI partition was corrupted somehow so that was why I tried cleaning the EFI partition along with the other two partitions. But even with a new EFI and other partitions, the drive was not useable once it was used to try to boot as an internal drive in the suspect computer.
Now here I am dropping into speculation mode. My guess is that something in the very basic ROM (Pram?) that recognizes a hard drive is in the internal slot and tries to get to the EFI instead fails and in the process it screws up the EFI (or maybe even an address table?) in the hard drive. If it recognizes that there is no internal hard drive, it will happily boot from either a USB stick, a USB connected external hard drive or a Firewire/Terminal mode computer connected to it.
Sounds like a motherboard problem but I am wondering if it is possible to "flash" the very basic ROM that is at the start of the process back to factory default or maybe just replace the chip if it is the same one used as part of the Firmware password protection system.
Anyone have any other ideas or thoughts about possible solutions or at least a way to definitely identify what the problem's cause?

Answer has been found. The internal drive SATA cable was replaced and the system is now working correctly.

24" iMac not recognizing internal hard drive..

end of '07 iMac 24" 2.4GHz
I have been having problems with this iMac since day 1... I'm kind of fed up with it at this point BUT I would like to get it working at least.
PROBLEM: Yesterday I was working on the ol' iMac and I walked away, the computer fell asleep and when I got back to wake it up it seemed a little off. I restarted and thats when the magic happened. I got the question mark of death. Didn't think it was an issue since I've gotten it in the past. Usually I restart again, maybe reset PRAM, and its fine. Orrrr if that doesnt work I use the Snow Leopard disc or Disk Warrior and it'll work fine. Yesterdays problem was more unique.
Disc Utility, Disk Warrior, etc are not even recognizing the internal hard drive at all. Nothing. Like it doesn't even exist. When you try and set the start up disk, it's missing from the list. It doesn't make any noise, nothing. It worked fine 5 minutes before that.
Any ideas? or is it time for the ol' Apple repair shop? Could it be just the drive or something more serious? Luckily I have a time machine and everything should be backed up incase of the worst scenario.
Any help would be great. thanks.

It sounds like the drive has failed, you can try starting it with the install disc it came with and trying to repair the disk. The instructions for doing that are:
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install or Restore disc.
2. Restart the computer, then hold the C key during startup.
3. From the Apple menu, choose Disk Utility. Do this in the first screen of the Installer. Don't click 4. Continue. If you click Continue in a Mac OS X Installer version earlier than 10.2, you must restart from CD again.
5. Click the First Aid tab.
6. Click Repair Disk.
7. After repairing the disk, try to start from the Mac OS X hard disk.
If the drive still cannot be seen then make an appointment with an AASP.
Regards,
Roger

IBook Not Detecting Internal Hard Drive

So, this morning my computer started acting slowly, and apps started freezing. I restarted, and to my horror found that it wouldn't boot. It starts, and the screen is gray, but then nothing happens. I have discovered that the problem must be the iBook not detecting the hard drive. I booted into a linux live CD, and found that it could access the HD. Then when I turned my comp off, and went into select boot drive mode by holding option on startup, I found that no hard drives were listed to boot from. I have also tried connecting to my computer via firewire from another computer, and that couldn't detect it either. What is the problem here? I am becoming very nervous all my work is on there. Thanks for the help.

Try booting from the Apple Restore disk and run the Apple Hardware Test that is on that disk. I fear that it may confirm a failure of your hard drive, but you never know until you try.

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Mac not reading internal hard drive, running from external

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