MacBook Pro hard drive problems: Can it be hard drive cable?

Question

My MacBook Pro 2009, (13inch, snow leopard), does not boot into OsX. I also have bootcamp windows, and I can boot into windows with no problem.

I pressed the D key while starting and made a Apple Hardware Test. The result was recognition of the following problem: 4HDD/11/40000004:SATA(0,0)

I tried booting with OsX installation disks and formatting the HFS partition, but the HFS partition does not SHOW UP! It only shows my other partitions (FAT and NTFS). It's strange, because my bootcamp windows can see and read from my HFS partition.

1. Do you think that my hard drive is failing? if so, why I can still read the HFS partition from windows?

2. Some one was suggesting that it might be a hard drive cable problem. Does anyone else have any information about it? CAN it be really a cable probelm after all? I mean I can still use it under windows with no problem, if the cable was faulty, would this be possible?

Thank you

Answer 1

The most overlooked part is the cable. i've worked in an Apple tech dept for the last 8-9 years and in the 13" MBP's i've seen Data cables/SATA cables go bad more often then the hard drive. could be from the thin factor of the drive or the drive itself causing the cable to short.

Best bet try the cable first before you mess with any data.

Answer 2

Any time you experience a hard drive (not rice!) error, it's safe to assume the worst and take the initial precaution of backing up your data... Right now, before anything gets worse! Clone the whole drive and see if the clone boots.

Once you have a good backup, you can play with your old drive, attempting to reformat the entire device and see if that "fixes" the proble.

My experience leads metro suggest a real simple procedure: replace the drive before you can't get anything off it. Flakey hardware tends to fail at the worst possible time.