A MacBook Pro came in from a customer near Kirkton Community Centre, up in Strathmartine. It's the 13 inch model from 2017 with two Thunderbolt 3 ports and a proper row of function keys, the one Apple calls the A1708. The fault on the booking was short and to the point: at start-up it showed a folder on the screen and got no further.
That folder, usually with a question mark flashing inside it, is a Mac's way of saying it can't find a drive with a working copy of macOS to start from. Sometimes the system on the drive has got itself in a muddle. Other times the drive has packed in. Either way the laptop has nothing to load, so it just sits there showing you the folder.
We booked it in for a diagnostic just before two on a Wednesday afternoon. On this model, the one without the Touch Bar, the SSD isn't soldered to the logic board but lives on its own wee card in a slot, so once the bottom case is off the old one can come out and another can go in. The Touch Bar versions aren't so kind. Their storage is part of the board.
This one needed a replacement drive. Out came the old SSD and in went a 128GB Apple one. Then macOS had to go on from scratch. We put macOS Big Sur on first, with the installer showing about 23 minutes to go, and once that had finished we updated it to Ventura, the last version of macOS that Apple released for this 2017 model. So it's as up to date as this laptop can officially get.
While the bottom case was off we cleaned the inside too. Then came our laptop tests. The replacement drive came up healthy, the battery was still at 91% health after 130 charge cycles, the memory held steady, and the screen, speakers, microphone, webcam and trackpad all checked out fine.
It was ready to collect by twenty past four that same afternoon, with the new drive fitted, macOS installed and the inside cleaned.
If your Mac starts up to a folder, don't keep switching it off and on and hoping for the best. It won't sort itself out. And if the drive's on its way out, more restarts can make things worse. If there's anything on it you'd like saved, tell us when you drop it in. It's usually a fixable job, and on a Mac like this one it costs a lot less than a new laptop.
Need the same repair? See our full Hard Drive Repair Dundee | Repair Alliance service for pricing and what's covered.
