Macbook does not see new hard drive

I have one of the first black macbooks...
Intel Core Duo
2GHZ
2mb L2 Cache
2GB RAM
667 MHz bus
Boot ROM Version: MB11.0061.B03
SMC Version 1.4f12
I had an 80GB HD in it that has died. I decided to replace it with a WD Scorpio Blue 160GB.
I've booted to the optical drive and went into Disk Utility to format the new drive but the computer would not recognize the drive. So I formatted it with another computer using a USB enclosure. I put the new HD back and still not recognized.
I then went ahead and installed Snow Leopard on the new drive via USB enclosure, using the macbook I would eventually put the drive into.
Now when I put the new drive, with the OS installed, still not reco

Let us resume the required steps, after putting inside a new, virgin disk:
1. Start up machine and as soon as possible put CD/DVD, press key C to force boot from CD; if the sequence is not fast enough and machine passed over the initial phase, and ? was displayed, force shut down by pressing button key, then start again, with CD/DVD inside
2. Press key C after start, and wait until the Apple logo in displayed, wait
3. You will see a list of install language, choose one, and
4. Go to Apple bar and choose Disk Utility; on the left side, you will see the disk, select it, then, on the cenral-lower part of displayed windows go to Options and choose Apple Partition Map (APM), go back and choose, if not already chosen by default, Mac OS Extended Journaled (HFS+), 1 partition (or more, some prefer more than one), click to partiion/erase disk. Note that you MUST have both conditions achieved: APM and HFS+
5. Close Disk Utility and revert to installation proper, proceed.
If you do not see the disk on the left side of Disk Utility, then disk is damaged or badly connected.
P.S. The same procedures are applied to any disk, with the note that:
- for Intel Macs, partition map should be GUID, not APM
- for external disks or flash drives intended to smoothly work with Windows, format should be FAT 32 and Master Boot Record; NTFS may be done with an additional utility like NTFS-3G or NTFSmounter

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Sorry if this is already answered somewhere, but I have searched so many forums that my head is swimming!
My boyfriend connected a new USB drive to his MacBook, formatted the new disk, copied some backup data onto it. At some point, the MacBook hung, so he held down the power key until the MB turned off.
Each time we restart it now, we get the flashing-folder-with-question-mark, and Tiger won't boot.
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Let me guess: you're also experiencing a low clicking noise from the right side of your mac immediately after you turn it on, right? Same thing happened to me and others, in fact there are several threads on this subject already:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=960977&start=0&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5325539&#5325539
My drive was done for, and no data could be saved. I ended up buying a new drive, and now I'm just hoping the same thing doesn't happen again. I'm beginning to get a sense that this problem is occurring on a more frequent level now that the 1st generation macbooks have reached their 1-year birthday, give or take. Let's hope Appel fesses up if it is indeed a design flaw.
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I bought a new hard drive and have gotten a new OS disk but now it shows the folder and blinking question mark every time i turn it on.
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If you insert the OS disk (is it one for this model MacBook or a generic retail OS install disk, or something else?) and boot the computer while holding the C key down on your keyboard, will it boot to the install disk?
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Hi,
My Macbook wouldn't boot, hard drive was making an odd sound, only would go to the gray/blue screen with the flashing ? folder. I bought a new hard drive and installed it, used Leopard DVD to boot, went to Disk Utility and the only thing that showed up was the DVD. I tried re-seating the drive and still nothing.
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Hey hauebj01 and welcome to the forum -
I know it's a hassle but I've heard of some folks having quite a bit of trouble seating replacement drives. You might try that again. Sometimes you have to push harder than you think you should. Make sure that nothing is obstructing the connection.
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By the way, which HDD did you purchase?
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Attachments:
AMDx64.zip ‏160 KB

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It looks like both your drives have serious problem (that's why Disk Utility says it can't repair and you can't update the system in drive "A"). The fact that you can boot into 10.3.9 doesn't mean that the problems don't exist. In your case I would trust either drive and would do a backup of all the data, reformat the drives and then reinstall everything since the tols you have can't solve the problems.

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Thank you. That's what I thought will need to happen.
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Cantobellus:
So I changed out the hard drive and the computer worked fine for 3 days and then it did the same thing.
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