SATA cable, HDD or worse?

[unexploded]

Hello folks, been a while! This is a long one but I feel the detail is required to hopefully determine the problem.

I very recently upgraded my late 2011 MBP 13" from Mavericks to Sierra. It went fine, seemed to run well for a day... then it slowed down, and my apps stopped opening.

Naturally I restarted, and I believe it was trying to boot in safe mode. Got a load of Terminal like text overlaid over the grey Apple start up screen. It then kept restarting itself with the same screen every time.

Eventually the folder with the question mark appeared, then the grey 'no entry' symbol.

Panic starts to set in... I tried various key combinations to no avail and then decided to try Disk Utility. Tried First Aid - the disk itself said no problems but on the Macintosh HD (I guess thats the partition?) it said it found problems. Tried repairing but said it couldn't unmount.

Tried various options such as reinstalling the OS (after verification, didn't have permission), Time Machine wouldn't work, and in the end resolved to try erasing the disk and starting again. Again it said it couldn't unmount.

I hooked up the MBP to an iMac (target via FW800), and could see the hdd fine, and backed up my files manually. I could not repair the hdd though - same issue.

In the end, I found a SATA - USB cable, removed the HDD and plugged it in as an external drive on the iMac. Managed to format, and plugged back into the MBP via USB. I successfully reinstalled Sierra.

So with that, I popped the HDD back into the unibody and plugged in the SATA cable. It booted, however, the Internet wouldn't work (WiFi and ethernet said they were connected), WiFi symbol wouldn't show up in the bar no matter how many times I clicked the tick box in Preferences for it to appear. Many apps wouldn't launch either.

I took the hdd back out, and tried with the USB cable. This seems OK now. Apps work fine as does the internet.

Thr hdd is a Seagate SSHD I installed myself only two years ago. The cable seems fine and the connections are sound.

What might this problem be do you think?

Thanks for taking the time to read

 

[chscag]

I recommend replacing both the HDD (preferably with a SSD) and the SATA cable at the same time. You've spent enough time trouble shooting and will probably spend even more. If you've already backed everything up, it should just be a matter of $$ and some DIY to get things working again.

 

[simonsi]

Could be cable or drive TBH, you could load DriveDX and check for CRC errors, thats a good indicator of cable problems but TBH you may also have a problem with the drive, 2yrs isn't unheard of for a failure.

Rub is if you replace the drive you will at least hopefully have a better drive even if it turns out to be the cable. If you replace the cable you'll still have a slow old drive...

 

[unexploded]

@simonsi and @chscag thank you both for replying and sorry for the late response (my phone was also bust up so had limited access).

Well this might confirm what you are suggesting. I booted up the drive this morning, using the USB>SATA cable. All was going fine. At this point, this is a brand new install of Sierra btw. Just went to download Chrome, and tried launching the install app. It hung and stalled. Couldn't force quit. Had to hard reset the laptop. I've restarted fine, and managed to install many of my Adobe CC programs, and launched one of them with no problems.

I wonder if the SSHD is on its way out then? I find it strange though that the SATA cable inside the MBP is behaving how it is though - why is it usually okay via USB? Perhaps both have gone or going...

 

[Fishrrman]

"Thr hdd is a Seagate SSHD I installed myself only two years ago. The cable seems fine and the connections are sound."

Change out the drive.
This time, put a REAL "SSD" into it -- not one of those "hybrid" drives.

 

[unexploded]

"Thr hdd is a Seagate SSHD I installed myself only two years ago. The cable seems fine and the connections are sound."

Change out the drive.
This time, put a REAL "SSD" into it -- not one of those "hybrid" drives.

Go on, enlighten me...
[doublepost=1536448250][/doublepost]Bit of an update. Downloaded DriveDX as per @simonsi 's recommendation. Was getting a bunch of errors both on USB mounted and SATA mounted. I can't sadly get them on to here (can't open files again - mounted on SATA) but I made a note of the diagnostics:

• 3,670,195 operations were aborted due to drive timeout
• Potential oxidised cable
• data transfer errors
• 1 I/O error

After mounting on Sata again, I get many popups saying that I can't log in to iCloud, Facetime,iMessage etc saying I need to change my password. No Wifi. Adobe CC needs to be repaired. Tried taking screen shots, and got "you don't have permission to save files in the location where screen shots are stored". Tried exportting the report from DriveDX but got "can't write file, invalid argument".