Chosen Solution
It won’t boot. The hard drive is not recognized in Disk Utility or in a fresh install. I took out the hdd and plugged it in another computer and it is fine. The optical drive works fine, so I doubt it’s the logic board. I think it’s just the SATA power/data cable. I heard that it could potentially be fixed by putting some tape in between the drive and the cable to force the connections closer together. I will try that tonight and report back. If it’s not the cable then I believe it’s the logic board. I’m not interested in spending $600 on a new board, but I would be willing to remove the optical drive and use the adapter that allows for a second HDD to be installed there. So I guess I’m asking if anyone has any other ideas, but also I want to make sure that if I replaced the optical drive with my HDD that I could use that as my only drive. Everything previously says that it is meant to be used for expanded storage, but I want to confirm that it can be the boot drive as well. Thanks!
What is the SATA spec of your HD’s you are trying to use in this system? If you don’t know can you give us the make and model of the drives. Can you boot up with the the recovery CD/DVD disk or a USB thumb drive? If you can see you can check the firmware level your system has. Refer to this Apple TN: EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Macs. If your firmware is older try upgrading it and try installing the HD again.
if you can i would try a different hdd , with the failure rate of hdds now days idont place much faith in them
Just replace the HDD ribbon, you can buy one on amazon for like $40 its easy.
