Chosen Solution
My problem is this: I Installed a new SSD into my mid 2009 MacBook Pro. At first it was working great, then after watching some video’s, screen went black, after the cursor just spun and spun. sometimes after going black I’d be able to move the cursor sometimes not. after a force shutdown, and restart, then I’d get the circle with the line, or the question mark. I put back the old drive, worked perfectly. it was suggested to change the hard drive cable, which I did, and surprised how easy it was, booted up the computer, all excited, and after using after a couple hours watching video from same site (mypoints.com) the same thing happened! So i reinstalled old drive, and booted up the new drive from an enclosure, but not a 3.0 (not sure if that matters) and it worked flawlessly the rest of the day… Now I have the old drive in, and I’ll know if it works like is used to, as I’m sure it will… I really don’t want to have to just keep the external attached to use. Please help… I’m also thinking about bringing it in. I even bought a folding laptop stand with fans in case it was getting to hot, and it happened again …
I’m suspecting you are using either the wrong SSD - A fixed SATA III (6.0 GB/s) drive Vs a fixed SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) or using an auto sense drive which matches the systems I/O which in this case is SATA II (3.0 Gb/s). As a matter of course I always replace the HD SATA cable when I put in a new SSD. Even in the older SATA II systems. Here the over flexing of the cable weakens them and the rough aluminum uppercase can wear them as well. The issue is the intensity of the data flows is higher with SSD’s than HDD’s so while the HDD works the SSD will often fail!
Sounds like the only thing you havent tried is to actually replace the SSD. It seems to be the culprit from the description you gave.
but still, does anyone have any other suggestions of what it might be? should i reset the SMC? would it hurt to do it if it’s not needed? or should i reset the nvram, and would it hurt to do it if not needed? i did also replace the battery recently….
