I am having MacBook boot issues with a WD Blue 500GB WD500BPVT - that seems a common problem.
When it is installed in the MacBook Pro (MBP, 15" 2010 Unibody) the Mac won’t boot off it (get grey screen with flashing folder) even though MaxOS 10.5.8 Leopard is installed…
If I leave the WD in the MBP and I boot from an external HD, firstly the MBP says it can’t recognise the internal WD and offers me the choice to Initialise, ignore or eject it. I select initialise and disk utility reports that there is only a FAT partition of 58.2 GB on the WD and the rest is free space - and options are greyed out. Err? It’s a 500GB drive with one Mac partition on it.
When I put the original HD (an ST950032 500GB) back in the MBP and boot off it, all is fine. I then put the WD in an external enclosure, and the MBP sees it fine and Disk Utility correctly reports a MacOS Journalled GUID partition of 465.8GB on the WD Blue.
All the data is there (from doing an earlier clone). I just can’t boot off it - weird.
Note, even when the Mac is booted off the original installer DVD, Disk Utility sees this weird FAT partition - it’s all greyed out and can’r be erased or anything; and the partition name has gone - it says dsk01s1 or similar.
Yet, when the drive is external Disk Utility can modify it.
Surely there is a fix for this? Have tried all the SMC / PRAM reset stuff and know all the fixes for the Flashing Folder issue…
The box even says that the WD Blue is 'Suitable for all operating systems (except XP) out of the box". How can you be sure that a drive you but will work in a MBP before you spend your money?
