Using the HDD i took out of my mbp

Lorddalron

Lorddalron

Lorddalron

Associate
Joined
31 Mar 2012
Posts
496
Location
Northern Ireland
Not sure if ive asked this before but basically im looking to use the 750gb HDD i took out of my MBP when i replaced it with a SSD.

My problem though is when i connect it to the lap top via the sata-to-usb cable that came with the SSD its not showing up in disk utility of finder.

Not sure if it needs formatted or not but i cant see how i can anyway, would i need to put it back in the mbp first?
 
Last edited:
Could try some form of partition software (not sure what the common or built in one on Mac is) to see if it detects it.

I remember a similar situation on my Windows machine, it couldn't detect it in Explorer, but could see it using the built in "Disk Management" tool for creating partitions.

The system could just be getting confused because I assume there is still an install of OS X on the 750GB drive.
 
You say it doesn't show up in Disk Utility but does it show up on your desktop at all?

If it doesn't it could be the drive is busted, the cable may not be working, or it won't read it as an external drive for whatever reason due to it seeing a version of OS X installed on there. Not too sure why it would be the latter as I did a hard drive replacement and hooked the old HDD up in a USB external drive enclosure and formatted it to be used as a storage drive. Do you happen to have an external hard drive enclosure that is USB, not Sata to USB? Try this if you can.

The only other thing I could recommend doing if your Mac is not picking up the drive at all is try hooking it up to a Windows machine, if it picks it up format it to a FAT32 drive then hook it up to your Mac again, see if that works.
 
Nymins said:
The system could just be getting confused because I assume there is still an install of OS X on the 750GB drive.
Click to expand...

yea, i used carbon copy cloner from the HDD to SSD. So if i was to remove the SSD now and put the HDD back in i can work away (minus all the stuff ive downloaded since the time of the swap that is).
 
As mentioned above, the cable could be dodgy. I bought a cheapo external hard drive case for my laptop drive when I switched to an SSD, but the cable it came with was terrible. Either worked intermittently, or not at all.

I'd just the steps Kappa303 suggested and try it in a Windows machine and format if possible.
 
Kappa303 said:
You say it doesn't show up in Disk Utility but does it show up on your desktop at all?

If it doesn't it could be the drive is busted, the cable may not be working, or it won't read it as an external drive for whatever reason due to it seeing a version of OS X installed on there. Not too sure why it would be the latter as I did a hard drive replacement and hooked the old HDD up in a USB external drive enclosure and formatted it to be used as a storage drive. Do you happen to have an external hard drive enclosure that is USB, not Sata to USB? Try this if you can.

The only other thing I could recommend doing if your Mac is not picking up the drive at all is try hooking it up to a Windows machine, if it picks it up format it to a FAT32 drive then hook it up to your Mac again, see if that works.
Click to expand...

I doubt the drive is busted as its been like this since i took it out of the MBP. Like you, i was looking to buy one of this external HDD cases to turn it in to an external drive but thought for the time being i could just use the lead that came with the Samsung SSD kit to transfer the data.

i'll hook it up to the desktop later to see if it gets recognised, if not, try and pick up an external enclosure. The lead i have at the minute should be ok as well as it worked initially to copy form the HDD to SSD.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom