Chosen Solution

Hi, I hope everyone is keeping well. Problem: MacBook pro 13” early 2011 is stuck on the loading screen Context: About 1 month ago, I faced the question mark folder in the loading screen problem. After watching videos/ reading forums and following the outlined solutions, I concluded that my hard drive cable was the problem instead. The laptop had been working perfectly fine up until that point and I’ve never had any problems with it. Note at that stage, I was unable to see the drive in the computer (it wasn’t visible when choosing a drive to boot onto). I ordered a replacement cable from amazon and followed the ifixit replacement guide. Fortunately, I no longer face the question mark folder issue and can see the drive. However, when I turn on my laptop, it just sits on the loading screen and remains at 100%. Not sure if this is helpful, but it was on OS High Sierra. Attempted fixes: I have looked on the internet and have tried the following (in no particular order): Ran first aid on Disk Utility (ran just fine)Resetting the SMC and PRAM (still gets stuck on the loading screen)Reset the NVRAM (still gets stuck on the loading screen)Booted up into recovery mode and tried to reinstall Mac OS (this was suggested by Apple support) When attempting to reinstall mac-os (both in internet and offline recovery modes), it got stuck at around 2 minutes left and stayed there for 10 hours+. I am not really sure what to do at this point. Given that the cable was not the official unibody cable, I suppose there is a chance that is the problem (however, would the drive be visible if there was an issue with the cable?) From some searching around, I did see the following suggestions: Booting onto an external driveErasing my drive and proceeding I would like to keep the data on my hard drive. I also have access to a 1 TB Hard-drive which has 50% (I think) allocated for ‘mac-structured’ files. What is the best course of action to follow at this point? Any help is greatly appreciated. I can provide more information if necessary. Update (08/09/2020) @danj - thank you very much! I created a bootable USB and I think the problem has been fixed. I have added a few notes for anyone else that reads this (especially if you are making a USB bootable from windows):

  1. I followed the following guide for windows: https://pureinfotech.com/create-macos-bo…
  2. You need to download the OS High Sierra .dmg file (from the link you provided)
  3. If you start up your system and reinstall the os, you might find that it says something about ‘This version of install macOS is damaged and can’t be used’ You can encounter that if you are using an older installer file - In that case you need to change the date of your laptop to 2016 (using terminal) or earlier and that fixes the problem. There are some youtube videos that show how to do this if you type the error message into google.

Best answer here is get a new USB thumb drive (the bigger the better 256GB would be best) to prep up as a bootable drive. Then boot under it. You talk about not using the correct cable “Given that the cable was not the official unibody cable” This cable is a custom cable! you can’t use just anything. You have two choices here MacBook Pro 13" Unibody (Early 2011-Late 2011) Hard Drive Cable MacBook Pro 13" Unibody (Mid 2012) Hard Drive Cable I personally recommend using the 2012 cable as its a better made cable. Even still you want to use care in handling the cable as you can damage the cable! You don’t want to crease the cable for the corner bends. Instead you should use an old BIC pen ink straw to use as a forming brake to create a nice arc. That way you don’t damage the thin foil wires.