Mac laptops forum: Macbook Pro Not Booting.

But I think I can boot into recovery.

In that case, you have a bad HDD cable. Only ever seem to see that in the 2010s for some reason. Thinking there was just a couple of bad batches that made their way into units.

Anyway, good news is, this will be a cheap repair. The cable itself is probably about $20, and given it takes about 5 minutes (if that) to put in, any reputable place will probably cut you some kind of break on the labor fee. You might even be able to find one to buy yourself on ifixit.com. You'll need at least a PH0 screwdriver, PH00 is better, but PH0 will work. Other than that, it's four screws and pulling up a bit of cable that's glued to the top case. Use your finger to get rid of any residual glue that's left behind, and just put the new cable in like the old one was.

Of course if there's any kind of warranty on this unit, let it be someone else's problem to fix.

Thanks so much.

Did you experience this problem before, because I think you maybe right? There is no warranty left on it.

However how do you think the original hdd mac partition disappeared and had problems as seen in the paragraph of my post?

Yes, I've run into this issue many times before, and since you say the problem persists across multiple HDDs, it's either that cable or the MLB, and if it's the MLB you may as well start looking for a new laptop if it's OOW. However, one of these cables is a very reasonable financial risk to take. If it doesn't work, you're only out a relatively small amount of money.

Thanks for your response. very helpful
I think it might be the hdd cable, mostly because Lion boots up of my external hard drive. Do you agree?

Thanks

I managed to replace the hdd cable myself with one from another mac and it fixed the problem. Could of been a loose connection or a bad hdd cable, either way it works now.

Thanks so much