I have put some tape on the alu cover to protect the SATA cable better

Worked for me, after my MacBook stopped working I first just replaced the harddisk for a SDD one only. But the re-install did not work, I lost the file system and managed to partially install the new drive. I realised this might be caused by the faulty SATA cable and was proven right.

I also taped some electrical isolation tape on the alu cover to protect the SATA cable.

This is what I did: I bought a WD Black (4T) and an enclosure for my old HD. First I put the WD disk in the enclosure and made a copy using CarbonCopy Cloner. The first copy failed somewhere during the night so I retried with all the energy/screen saving features off, network off and connected the enclosure directly to the iMac instead of using my usb hub. This went okay.

Then I opened up my iMac and swapped the disks. I put the thermal connector in a position away from the other connectors.

Then booted the iMac from the old HD, OSX does this automatically and selected the new WD as start up disk in the System Preferences. Rebooted.

iFixit!