New hard drive spinning wheel-please help

I have a 2008 mackbook. I went to upgrade the harderive today to a segate hard drive. I had not problem installing the hardware. Once it was installed I plugged the power cord back in and rebooted the computer. I then installed the disk utility so that I could reinstall the software and all i got was a spinning wheel. I know the computer still works because when I reinstalled my orginal hard drive my computer turned back on. any ideas on what to do? I tried holding the "c" key but that didn't help.

You're doing things right but maybe not with the right timing. Insert your install DVD and restart, press the C key immediately when you hear the startup chime, the MacBook should start successfully from the DVD then and you can run Disk Utility to partition and format your new drive. Make sure when you partition to select GUID partition scheme or your Mac won't boot.

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My MacBook won't boot into recovery mode after new hard drive installation. Please help!

I just installed a new hard drive. On boot it keeps on going to the flashing folder with a question mark inside.
I was able to format the new hard drive but am unable to boot into recovery mode to install the operating system over the air.
When I hold down Command -R it keeps on taking me to the flashing folder.
Please help!

A new hard drive doesn't have a recovery partition. It's totally blank.You're going to need either your original install discs or a Snow Leopard retail disc from which partition, format and install OS X.

New Hard drive not working - please help!!!

This is an original thread that I'd started:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2066043&tstart=0
Since that, I tried the following this morning.
I took out the old 100GB drive and fitted the new 500GB (blank) drive. My plan was to fresh install OSX, install Carbon Copy Cloner and then clone the old drive by plugging it in with a reading device I have. What actually happened was the following:
I put in my Mac OSX install disc 1. I opened disc utility from the top toolbar. In disc utility the new drive showed up and I formatted (erase option) it to mac OS Extended (journalled). I then began a fresh install of OSX. As it started the macbook told me I was '+running on battery power+' and '+was I sure?+'. With full battery I said yes and continued. All was going well and it prompted for the second install disc. It got some way through that and then got stuck at 38% installing garage band loops. The new internal drive was also making a repetitive noise - not loud or anything but certainly sounded like it was searching for something. As the whole thing was stuck and nothing was working I held down the power button.
I tried again with the first disc but it wont even do anything anymore! I took out the new drive and put in the old one. Booted up. Connected the new drive to the reader with the idea of re-formatting it via disc utility.
But now the brand new drive is not readable and is making the a few funny repetitive noises.
Please help me someone - I'm very worried about this new drive now!!! Is is broken or corrupted or something???
Your help is very much appreciated
Adam

Vegas Superstar wrote:
My plan was to fresh install OSX, install Carbon Copy Cloner and then clone the old drive by plugging it in with a reading device I have.
Hi VS,
What "reading device" are you using?
As it started the macbook told me I was '+running on battery power+' and '+was I sure?+'. With full battery I said yes and continued.
It is best to have the power adapter connected when running a long process like this which cannot be interrupted.
The new internal drive was also making a repetitive noise - not loud or anything but certainly sounded like it was searching for something. As the whole thing was stuck and nothing was working I held down the power button.
How long was it "stuck?"
I tried again with the first disc but it wont even do anything anymore! I took out the new drive and put in the old one. Booted up. Connected the new drive to the reader with the idea of re-formatting it via disc utility.
But now the brand new drive is not readable and is making the a few funny repetitive noises.
Please help me someone - I'm very worried about this new drive now!!! Is is broken or corrupted or something???
It sounds like there is something amiss with the new HD. If you have access to a different external enclosure, (even on a PC, just to see if the HD will function), you could try erasing/formatting it again. If not, I think it's time to contact the vendor about a return.

Hard Drive Crash! Please help

I was surfing the internet when my itunes froze up, and then safari froze up. So I just rebooted and I got the flashing folder icon with the ? in the middle of it. I popped in the install CD and help down "c". I went to disk utility where the hard drive would not show up on the left. I even went to try to reinstall MAC OSX and the hard drive would not show up. Finally I ran the hardware test and came up with this error: 4MOT/1/40000002:Left_Upper - Front
I researched this and found that it is the fan not operating correctly. I dont know how this could involve the harddrive. But shouldnt I get a hard drive error on the hardware test if indeed the harddrive crashed? The harddrive also makes a popping sound every now and then.
What is teh best way to go about getting my files? or am I doomed?
About installing a new hard drive, what is a brand? and is it hard to replace?

If you didn't make a back-up of your purchases to restore from (as you are advised to do) then I'm sorry to say that the policy on lost purchases is that you have to pay to download them again:
"Once a Product is purchased and you receive the Product, it is your responsibility not to lose, destroy, or damage the Product, and Apple shall be without liability to you in the event of any loss, destruction, or damage." iTunes Store: Purchased content can be downloaded only once
You could try contacting the iTunes Music Store Customer Service and you might be able to persuade them to sanction a second free download. There have been occasional reports in the iTunes forum of this happening, however just be aware that they are not under any obligation to do so. If you click on this link you'll be able to email your query: iTMS Customer Service
If you have an iPod that still has the purchases on it the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers was introduced with iTunes 7. You'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer
You might also want to check out these pages for future reference:
How to back up your media in iTunes
Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive

Hard drive installation problem, please help

I installed a new hard drive and get a prompt:
"No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"
I then insert the Mac OS install disk 1 and press a key and nothing happens -- it stays at the above prompt. What do I need to do?

Try holding the "c" key while booting with the Mac OSX disc already in... I believe that's the key to boot from CD. Maybe it's changed but worth a try.

White screen, new hard drive, blue screen. Help!

Tried to boot my MacBook Pro (2011) and just had blank white screen. Tried to boot from Mountain Lion bootable flash drive and just get a blue screen.
Installed new hard drive. Same thing. Suggestions?

After the dealer looked it over, he determined it has a bad logic board. However, searching online, I see the cause of all these 2011 MBP failures is due to the Raedon graphics card in them. Apple was replacing free for iMacs with the same part, but so far isn't doing the same for MacBook Pro's. I have emailed Apple, intend to call them, and posted on their support forum as well as other ones. FRUSTRATING.

New Hard Drive, OS X Disc Help!!

Hi,
Me and my mum's partner have both got MacBook's. This week i am going to get a new hard drive as 60GB is way too small.
I do not have my OS X disc's with me as i am here on holiday and they are at my other house, would it be possible to use his OS X disc's when installing my new hard drive?
Or would another option be to remove his hard drive, put my new one in his and setup the hard drive via his MacBook and then swap it into mine?
Thanks,
Andrew.

If the two Macs are exactly the same model, you can do it. Otherwise, it probably won't work (the Installer won't allow it). You could try...
If you had a way to mount the internal drive externally, you could use Disk Utility to "restore" from the old drive to the new drive. That would be the ideal way to do it, because you'd get everything exactly like it was before. You can use an external case or a device like this.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/U2NVSPATARH/
Or would another option be to remove his hard drive, put my new one in his and setup the hard drive via his MacBook and then swap it into mine?
It seems rather extreme to take apart two MacBooks, but I think it would work. Won't you void the warranty (if still in effect).

My hard drive crashed. Please help!!!

My hard drive crashed on my PC. I Lost everything. Unfortunately i never got round to backing up my i Tunes music folder. I still have all my music on my i Pod. when i reinstall i Tunes on my new computer will i be able to plug in my i pod and transfer all my music back accross to new computer? or will the computer automatically update my i pod and effectively blank it? Please help!!!
I Have a 4 g ipod and using windows xp on PC
Windows XP

Just a little additional information to supplement the good advice you have received from Mitch.
You may already be using the iPod in manual update mode in which case you can ignore the rest of this post. In manual mode, your iPod is safe from being accidentally erased. However, if your iPod is set for automatic update, when you connect you will get a message that your iPod is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, click *No*. Your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list. Change the update setting in Preferences>iPod to "manually manage songs and playlists" Managing Your Songs Manually
You can also use a keyboard command to prevent your iPod auto-syncing with iTunes. While connecting the iPod to the computer hold down the Shift + Ctrl keys (on a Mac hold down the Option and Command (⌥ and ⌘) keys). This will stop the iPod from auto-syncing with iTunes and the iPod will appear in the source list. Wait until you are sure the iPod has mounted, and that it will not auto sync and then you can let the keys go. This may take between 3 and 30 seconds depending on your computer. Then go to Preferences>iPod and check the "Manually manage songs and playlists" box.
Keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync again.

160GB iPod Classic Hard Drive Problem? please help!

hi,
I've been trying for weeks to figure out what is wrong with my 160gb classic. it is 14 months old, so just out of warranty. I recently updated to iTunes 10.1.2, after not having synced my iPod for a few months. a few weeks later i went to plug in my ipod and it wasn't recognized by iTunes. i got a bit worried, so i kept trying to unplug it and plug it back in. the one time it popped up, iTunes said it needed to be restored, but the restore failed and it was stuck in disk mode when I unplugged it. I replugged it in and it would only show up in Disk Utility. after tonnes of searching, i tried to do an erase from there, which only made things worse, as the erase constantly failed. Finally i tried to plug my ipod into my old PC running Windows XP. after a few tries iTunes recognized it. the first few restores failed, but after about 5 one completed and i could finally access the menus on my iPod again. However, my ipod still won't show up on iTunes on either of these computers. I did a diagnostic test (SMART or whatever) and the number of the ones that aren't supposed to be high are really high. it this a hard drive issue? is there anything i can do?
another thing i ended up doing is plugging my dad's 3G nano into my mac. iTunes wouldn't recognize it either, which worried me. Disk Utility would see it though, so i just ejected it as to not break it any more.
I really want ONE of these ipod's to work! please help!

Look at the following support article and work your way through the steps
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1369

Hard drive detection problem - PLEASE HELP!!!!

I'm about at my wits end with this problem. One of my drives crashed over the weekend, and since then the replacement drive never gets detected. When I have the second drive installed, my computer never gets past the "Verifying DMI Pool Data", then says disk boot failure. When I take out the second drive, my computer boots fine. I've tried different jumper settings, thinking maybe i looked at the diagram backwards, disconnecting my DVD drive and putting the hard disk on the secondary IDE, and installing the new drive as the master and installing Windows on it, with the old drive as the slave. Nothing has worked. As soon as I connect a second hard drive, I get a disk boot failure. I've checked the boot priority a hundred times, and it's correct. In case it was a power supply problem, I removed everything except the two hard drives and some RAM, and that didn't fix anything. I'm lost as to where to go from here. My computer works fine without the second drive, but I need the second drive for gaming.
I'm now thinking it may be the motherboard, because a couple things have happened over the last month. First, all of a sudden I got a CMOS checksum error, then about a week and a half ago the onboard NIC died. And when I installed the updated drivers and flashed the BIOS, on restart I received an error message saying something was wrong with the overclocking settings and had been reset to the default values. The problem with that is I never overclock anything.
I'm not even sure the old drive actually crashed anymore. I heard clicking coming from the computer, and when I all of a sudden lost access to the drive, I assumed it crashed. But now that I am unable to get the brand new drive to work, I'm thinking I need to get a new motherboard. I'm trying to avoid that as long as I can though because this one is only 5 months old.
Would a possible solution be to just leave the master on IDE, and buy a SATA drive to use as a second disk? Or does mixing IDE and SATA cause issues?
Thanks for any help anybody may be able to offer.
Anyway, here are my system specs:
K8N Neo4 motherboard
Athlon64 3200+
2.5 GB RAM - 3x 512 and 1x 1GB stick
Boot disk - Western Digital 120GB ATA 100 IDE
Old Slave - Seagate 60GB ATA 100 IDE
New Slave - Western Digital 120GB ATA 100 IDE
NIC - Linksys 10/100
DVD-RW - Mad Dog Multimedia
DVD-ROM - Sony
Graphics - GeForce 7800GTX
Sound - Mad Dog Entertainer 7.1
Power Supply - 420W

Quote
putting the hard disk on the secondary IDE, and installing the new drive as the master and installing Windows on it, with the old drive as the slave.
Does the 2nd HD work then, were you able to boot up and install Windows?
Does BIOS detect it?
Have you tried a new IDE cable?
Make sure that all the pins are properly in and not loose in the molex connector to the HD.
Have you tried using the new drive alone on IDE-1 or 2?
Have you tried clearing CMOS? remove P/S AC cord, press case power button a few times to drain remaining power then clearing CMOS buy way of the jumper.
Quote
I'm trying to avoid that as long as I can though because this one is only 5 months old
Did you buy this MB new?
If so you could RMA it.

Itunes to external hard drive?? PLEASE Help.

Hi Guys.
I like my iTunes library to be clean and neat. I have about 2,800 MP3's and it took me over a week to "edit" all of them and "clean them up" (properly spelled Artist, Genre, Album title, etc).
Now that everything is clean and neat, is there anyway I can copy my iTunes on to my external hard drive?
Should my computer crash, or I get a new one (this thing is OLD), I don't want to have to re-organize my entire iTunes library.
Any help/info is much appreciated.
Thanks,
Vic

StubChain - Thats interesting. Will try that. Thank you.
StarDeb - Thanks again. Sorry to sound illiterate here, but how do i "drag" the iTunes folder to the EHD?
I know how to drag things, but I'd have to minimize the C Drive window, and then open the G drive (EHD) and not sure how to DRAG when i has to relase the mouse to open and close folders.
Assume Copy and paste would work??
what about what your article said yesterday about clicking on "keep itunes organized". still need to do that?
Guys, thanks for the help, and dealing with me. I'm iTunes illiterate.
I still don't know how to get a downloaded song from "My Documents" (where they DL to) over to iTunes. lol
one struggle at a time.
*I've also tried to reward with the "helpful" tabs to you both, and an error happened. Will try again...promise...I'll just hit SOLVED.*

How do I find how large my Hard Drive is? Please help!

Recently been getting messages saying that my startup disk is full. And I'm thinking about getting a Time Capsule. But the thing is, I can't find out how big my hard drive is. I clicked the apple, then About this mac, and I could only find "Memory", which was only 1 GB. I know that can't be it, because my iTunes is over 90 GB. But I can't find the hard drive. Either I'm blind, or it's not there.
Please help
Thanks

Click more info in the about this mac pop up. Then under Serial-ATA. This will give you the size.
You can also click on your drive in finder and choose Get Info. This will also let you see the size.

My Imac needs a new hard drive. Can anyone help ensure I get the right one?

I have an Imac from around 2008-09. IMac8,1
It's running Mac Os X ver. 10.5.8 and has the stock hard drive in it.
2gb ram
Running a 2.8ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and I think has like 250 gb
I'd like to get something bigger and also upgrade the operating system. Don't need multiple TB's nor can I afford it but want to ensure i get the right thing for my needs.
It won't install adobe photoshop 6 because operating system is too old but don't want to spend money on new operating system with hard drive that keeps failing.
Error code: 4hdd/11/40000000 SATA (0,0) !
Got this error code about a year ago. downloaded a manual fan program that has helped but every third day or so it crashes and when i try reboot i get the dreaded question mark. usually if i let it rest for an hour or two it fires up but i don't want to risk anymore.
any help greatly appreciated.
cheers

I suspect a failed HD, in that case I'd recommend Apple Hardware Test in Extended Mode at least 3x. You will need the original install discs that shipped with the computer, if you do not have them any longer you will need to order a replacement set from Apple by calling AppleCare. You will need a credit card and the serial number of the machine. The cost should be nominal.

Impossible 300-1020 Hard Drive Issue! Please Help!

Being a systems administrator for 6 years and having over 15 years experience in computers...this has to be the most frustrating issue I've ever encountered!
I'll start off by saying that this is my friends touchsmart 300 and it appears to have suffered from the seagate HD firmware issue. He went out and bought a WD 1TB Caviar Black SATA HD to replace it but the BIOS will NOT detect it and the diagnostic always comes up with the: BIOHD-2 error!
I thought maybe it was bad out the box but when I hook it up to my HD adapter, it comes up fine on other pc's. I even partitioned it in disk management and it still does not show up. I ran WD's diagnostic utility on the drive and it passes all tests.
What's strange is that when I hook up other hard drives to it, it recognizes it right away in the BIOS and during W7 install! For some reason it does NOT like WD hard drives. I tried a 120GB Seagate HD, a 120GB Fujitsu HD and they both work and show up. But when I put in a 80GB WD hard drive, I get the same results as mentioned above with the same error. BTW - the 120GB HD's are 2.5" and the WD 80GB is 3.5". Not that it should matter except the speed.
- I have tried all the jumper settings on the WD 1TB HD just to be sure.
- I have tried all the different BIOS settings. (IDE & AHCI)
- I have pulled out the CMOS battery and reset all the BIOS settings back to default.
- I have reseated the SATA cables.
I have even setup Windows 7 on the 120GB HD that worked just to install the latest firmware, SATA controller updates, and BIOS updates from HP thinking it would fix the issue but it did NOT help. I even tried running the seagate firmware updates\utilities that were stickied in this forum.
As you can see, I've put in a lot of time and effort into this **bleep** thing! The HD size or name brand shouldn't matter! **bleep**?! I'm about to give up and just buy another HD for it.
If anyone has any other ideas or needs to know any more info, please let me know! I beg of you! lol

Hi,
I would contact Western Digital technical support and ask about a firmware patch.
You did try strapping the hard drive to 3.0 Gb/s, right?
BTW, I tried two WD sata III 64mb cache hard drives in my DYI system (see signature) and couldn't get them to run. One wasn't recognized and the other had lots of issues when I tried to install Windows. I returned both hard drives and switched to Samsung.
HP DV9700, t9300, Nvidia 8600, 4GB, Crucial C300 128GB SSD
HP Photosmart Premium C309G, HP Photosmart 6520
HP Touchpad, HP Chromebook 11
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Custom i7-4790k,Z-97, 16GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Plextor M.2 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650, GTX 660TI
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I cannot desactivate a previous computer. Hard drive changed. Please help

Hi.
Recently my hard drive crashed. I changed it but i forget to desactivate my creative cloud.
Please help.
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Contact activation support by web chat.
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New hard drive spinning wheel-please help

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