Why am I not able to install snow leopard on a new hard drive for my macbook pro, which at one point was upgraded to Lion?

I've just had my hard drive go caput and after purchasing a new one was inclined to install snow leopard but received an error message when attempting to do so.
I did not create a back up or restore file before I decided to upgrade from snow leopard.
I'm wondering why am I not able to simply install snow leopard on a brand new hard drive.  What would clue it into me having had ran lion before and why can't I simply delete that kernel or said file.    It makes completely no sense to me.  I come from a pc world where if I choose to format a hard drive, I can do a clean install of whatever OS I choose.  After all I only paid for my laptop as should be able to do with it what I wish. 
Any suggestions or insight would be greatly appreciated

1.  Was Lion on the machine and trying to downgrade?
2.  If so this might be an issue.  Newer machines are done for current OSX.
3.  If you have Lion on your machine try to install Snow Leopard on another partition or portable HD
4.  After you format and install SL on the other partition or drive Try to boot from this machine retarting and holding the Option key at boot up.
5.  See if that work. 
This is a trial and error way but Mountain Lion is right around the corner and Snow Leopard is 2+ yrs old.
Brian

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