Chosen Solution
I’m trying to swap out my probably damaged sata cable, but all the reliable sources I’ve looked at have sata cables for different models, while some people have had success using them interchangeably. Also, can anyone recommend any third party sata cables? I’d rather not buy OEM for this particular part.
Desktop SATA cables are more plan jane where you could use just about anything. Unlike desktops laptop SATA cables are custom as you don’t have room to put the extra mass of the cable as well as needing to be very thin as the space is quite tight. Some systems do use the same cable as the overall design was not altered within the series and in some cases across next generation of the model. In this series the cable is multipurpose. So here your limited on getting a real Apple part. Sorry ;-{ Here is the IFIXIT part: MacBook Pro 13" Unibody (Model A1278 Early 2011/Late 2011) Hard Drive Cable and we also can see the Apple part numbers: 922-9771 & 821-1226-A. Lastly, you do want to get the newer version of the part.
