Chosen Solution
My wife’s MacBook Pro mid-2010 had its hard drive removed by, let’s say, a person less than qualified to do so, for reasons not relevant to the question. When I opened the case to “assess the damage” and to get an idea of what I had to do to replace the drive, I inadvertently tried to remove the wrong bracket, the one closer to the front, by mistake. To my dismay, I noticed that the white bar LED, hidden behind the bracket, was on. There’s a circuit board loosely attached to the LED behind the bracket. I hope I didn’t damage that. I had wrongly assumed that the, ah, bozo would have turned the unit off, or more correctly, never turned it on, before removing the drive. I also wrongly assumed that the unit would not be on in the first place, with the drive missing. Apparently it can still be turned on (for hardware tests?). I also thought it would have auto-shut long since the 4 days ago that the drive was removed.The desktop and dock were visible when I opened the cover. My question is, could removing the drive while the unit was powered on have done serious damage? Is it possible that the unit turned on AFTER the drive was removed with the power off? Also, the 4 mounting (torx?) screws from the drive are missing. Do most drives come with these or can I get some from here when I order a new drive? Another anomaly, there were only 2 long screws at the back of the case instead of the 3 that are shown in the manual. The third one is a short screw and the threads are all the way to the top surface of the cover so it appears to be intentional. What’s up with that? Update Conclusion I installed a new 750 GB 7200 rpm SATA II WD Scorpio Black WD7500BPKT drive. I formatted the drive using Disk Utilities and installed OS X and default apps from supplied discs. I updated OS X to version 10.6.7 and all seems to be working well. I ran the Apple Hardware Test and, after almost an hour, got the coveted results: “No trouble found.” WHEW! So maybe the guy wasn’t a total half-wit. ;) Thanks all for your help. I hope others will find this first-hand information useful.
First, I think you’re looking at the wrong manual. If your machine is a 2010 it’s a Unibody. The icon you’ve put up is for the previous models and the teardown is completely different. This is going to change half of your questions. If appears that the bozo has continued his ways, please ask him to leave and we can get this thing fixed. If you give me the last three figures of your serial number, I will change the selection and post the correct guide. Next, are you replacing the drive, if so may we know the reason. If you have already bought a new drive, please list what you got and if it is new or used. Also do you have your original installation disk or a full install version of 10.6?
It’ always a good idea to unplug the battery before working on the guts. Easily done on theses machines when the back is off. If everything is working fine with the drive back in, why worry? The hardrive always has four torx pins, if they are missing you ought to get some. Here, for example. Normally there are always 3 long and one short screw at the back.
