New hard drive won't appear as destination for software reinstall

I have a macbook I bought in 2006. My 60G hard drive was failing so I purchased a new 320G and installed it myself. The online manual had good instructions for pulling the old hard drive out and putting the new one in, but skipped the part where I apparently had to swap the protective metal cover from one to the other. I did that myself. I didn't peel any stickers off the new one.
Now I'm using my old installation disks to reinstall Mac OS X v10.4, but when the screen appears that says "Select a destination volume to install the Mac OS X softward" there's no destinations to choose from. How do I get my computer to recognize the new hard drive?

You need to initialise your new disk by "Erasing it" and choosing the "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" format. You can do this using Disk Utility while booted from the Instal DVD, see Mac OS X 10.4: About the utilities available on the Mac OS X 10.4 Install DVD.
EDIT Adrian is obviously quicker on the draw
Message was edited by: Michael Conniff

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External hard drive won't appear on my desktop

I'm trying to run a backup, but my hard drive won't appear on my desktop. I see it in Disk Utility, so I know it's there...
...any suggestions?
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kevin

Kevin - There might be a few reasons as to why your external drive won't appear have you tried any of these suggestions:-
STEP ONE - Confirm that the drive is being seen by the system
Click the Apple icon and select About This Mac.
Click More Info.
Select the Drives and Volumes tab.
If the Iomega Hard Disk drive is not listed under the USB/FireWire arrow, proceed to STEP THREE.
If the Hard Disk drive is listed, continue with the next step.
STEP TWO - Format the Hard Disk drive to Mac HFS format
The Iomega Hard Disk drive is factory formatted to FAT32 for maximum compatibility. If you have not reformatted the disk or the disk is formatted to FAT32:
The disk may mount very slowly in OS X if the disk is FAT32 formatted.
Mac OS X will not mount any DOS (FAT32) partition larger than 128GB. For more information, please check the Apple® Web site at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107483
Warning: Erasing your Hard Disk drive will erase all of the information stored on the disk. If possible, back up your data before erasing the hard drive. Mac formatted disks are not cross compatible with other operating systems, such as Windows®, without the purchase of additional third-party software.
Double-click the Mac hard drive icon.
Double-click the Applications folder.
Double-click the Utilities folder.
Double-click the Disk Utilities icon.
Highlight the drive in the left window.
Click the Erase tab.
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Click the Erase button and then click Erase from the confirmation window.
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If the Hard Disk drive does not mount, continue with the next step.
STEP THREE - Are the Mac OS X drivers detecting the drive properly?
The Iomega Hard Drive may not mount if you are using Mac OS X versions under 10.1.3. If you are not using Mac OS X 10.1.3 or higher, please visit the Apple® Web site at http://www.apple.com/macosx/ for information on getting the latest version.

I had to install a new hard drive. How do I get Lion to reinstall w/o paying $29.95 again?

I had to install a new hard drive. How do I get Lion to reinstall w/o paying $29.95 again?

Boot into Internet Recovery
If your Mac problem is a little less common — your hard drive has failed or you’ve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet Recovery takes over automatically. It downloads and starts Lion Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection. And your Mac has access to the same Lion Recovery features online. Internet Recovery is built into every newly-released Mac starting with the Mac mini and MacBook Air.

Internal hard drives won't appear in Disk Util

I have a bizarre problem with my hard drives now. I'm on a 2.4GHz Core2Duo Macbook Pro 15" with 10.5.4. I've switched the hard drive a couple of times before with no issues whatsoever. Now, with the exception of the brand new one that won't hold an install, my internal hard drives don't show up in the install disk's Disk Utility.
I got a new hard drive to try the other day, installed it, booted to my OSX install disk to use Disk Utility. I switched the new disk to GUID and formatted it as journaled like usual. It took 4 hours to do the install, then after the restart it tanked. It booted back to the install disk where I checked it out. It could not repair the file system, and the drive was not "mounted". I mounted it, repartitioned and formatted it, and installed again. This time it stopped halfway through the installation and said the drive might be corrupt.
I unplugged the cable and battery, held the power button for over 5 secs, then just let it sit for about 10minutes with no power source while I thought about this. I put the original drive back in, booted into OSX, and put the new hard drive in an external USB enclosure. I formatted it while in OSX, then rebooted into the install disk and installed OSX on it while it was in the USB case. It took the installation more quickly (about an hour and a half...still not 20min like my old 7200rpm Hitachi 200g), then I booted into its OSX while in the USB drive. It booted ok, so I downloaded the updates and clicked to install them. It then went into a revolving restart. Eventually I decided it was not doing this because it was happy so I shut it off.
I swapped the hard drive out with another new one, and this one would not complete an installation while inside the computer either. It acted similarly while in the USB case. HOWEVER it would always show up as unmounted after a restart and would not recognize the drive inside the computer as a bootable disk.
I put my original drive in there to give up, and it gave me the ? folder. I booted to the install disk and it did not show up in the disk utility. I put my old hard drive in the USB case, booted to the install disk, and it showed that it was there, but unmounted and it could not repair the file system.
I repartitioned my hard drive (i have time machine working..not a huge setback) in the USB case and put it back in the computer. It still would not show up in disk utility. I put it back in the USB case, installed OSX onto it (in about 20min), restarted a couple times, saw that it was working, put it into my computer, and got the ? folder again.
I went out and bought a stardard 160GB SATA 5400rpm Seagate drive to try in there, and this fresh drive is not recognized inside the computer either when I boot into disk utility.
The brand new hard drive WILL show up in Disk Utility when I boot to it from the install disk, but it will not survive a complete installation.
So now I'm running OSX from my original hard drive in a USB case until I can figure out why the old disk recognized inside my laptop is the new hard drive upgrade, but it cannot complete an installation on it.
I'm originally a Windows slave, so I can only think in terms of AHCI or SATA-card drivers, or screwed up bios. But this is all pre-os-boot, and the apple firmware seems to be pretty automatic in picking the right settings to see stuff.

I kind of feel like drawing a flowchart to show all that I've tried. Its difficult to keep everything intelligible while listing the entire last week's efforts at 2:45am. :-/
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41951
I also explained it here, perhaps a bit differently. Maybe some reply there might spark someone's memory of a possible problem. I understand the nature of computers (been 100% geek for 20 years), but I'm hoping there's someone out there with the specific Apple expertise to help me out. Eventually the processes I've taken and my specific situation will become clearer as the questions widdle away at this.
My original 7200rpm SATA drive that works fine won't show up when connected to the SATA cable. I've repartitioned it with HFS, and repartitioned it as free space in the USB enclosure. It simply won't show up in Disk Util. Same with the brand new test SATA drive.
The new SSD SATAII does show up, but after a 4hr install the partition is unmounted and won't show up as a boot option. I can boot to the install disk and repartition it, reinstall, or remount it. But it will never be mounted to be booted from while connected to the computer. I've had 2 of the SSD's to try, one survived one restart, then went into a never-ending restart cycle after I installed the updates. The 2nd has never successfully been mounted after the install to boot from. Now nothing can be mounted to boot from within the computer. I have to boot off of any of these drives from the USB enclosure.
If I install OSX on them while in the USB enclosure, that works, but they will not mount when connected to the SATA cable inside the lappy. The platter style SATA drives won't even be recognized...
Thanks for the instant reply, this is driving me nuts 'cuz it makes almost no sense. Thanks so much to everyone that contributes. I appreciate everything.

New Hard Drive Won't Recognize My Time Machine Backup

I maxed out the space on my MacBook hard drive, so I bought a new 1TB hard drive to replace it. (I keep a TIme Machine backup of my computer on a external Passport) I installed the new hard drive, loaded up Snow Leopard and then it did the whole "Welcome" thing and asked if I wanted to set up the new hard drive. I went through the process and it asked if I wanted to transfer information to the new hard drive. I selected "transfer information from a Time Machine Backup" but when I hit "continue", it doesn't show my Passport, only "Macintosh HD". It's weird. I tried plugging the Passport into a different computer in the house, and it shows up fine.
I'm dead in the water right now. I have a new hard drive in my laptop with OS loaded on it, but no way to transfer my data from my Time Machine Backup to it! Any ideas why it won't show the Passport Drive?
Thanks - I'm really stuck right now.

Does it boot into Open Firmware with CMDOption+of ?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42642
reset-nvram (press Enter)
set-defaults (press Enter)
reset-all (press Enter)
Have you done a PRAM reset...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

New Hard-drive - won't reboot after restored with TM

Hey,
I got a new hard drive yesterday and used TM to restore my last back up. When I went to restart the computer it now doesn't go past the Apple and spinning gear.
I've tried to eject the CD and external hard-drive. I've restarted holding shift, then function, then cmd + alt + R + P. None of these have worked!
Help!
Thanks
Kash

KashUK wrote:
Hey,
It let me choose the HD but then it's stuck on the loading page again!
I'm not really sure what topic to look under in the trouble-shooting page. I'm not very good with computers.
Thank-you for the advice.
K
KashUK wrote:
Hey,
It let me choose the HD but then it's stuck on the loading page again!
I'm not really sure what topic to look under in the trouble-shooting page. I'm not very good with computers.
First, I guess I should ask just how you did the restore. Did you start up from your Install disc and use the +Restore System From Backup+ option in the Utilities menu, per #14 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum)? If not, do that.
|
Otherwise, you want #E8 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html]. Here's the direct link: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/E8.html Here's the gist of it:
Why did you get a new drive? If the old one failed, it's possible it corrupted your system as it was beginning to fail, and those changes got backed-up, so were brought back when you restored.
In that case, you might want to do the restore over, but select an earlier backup, from before the troubles started. Just be sure to use your +Snow Leopard+ install disc.
If you used a Leopard Install disc to restore a +Snow Leopard+ backup, that won't work. You may want to just do it over with the +Snow Leopard+ disc, or your best bet may be to just install OSX from your Snow Leopard Install disc, then download and install the 10.6.6 "combo" update from the link there.

External Hard Drive won't appear on PC (want cross platform)

I have an external USB Hard Drive. I formatted it using the Disk Utility, OS Format and Journaling. Did a small partition in case I needed a system boot drive. Now my sis needed to backup her laptop (Dell laptop), but the drive won't appear in My Computer, it recognizes there is a USB device on the lower task bar, but no drive anywhere.
Do I have to reformat? what steps do I need to make this USB drive cross-platform friendly?
Paul

Hi, Paul.
You may not want to reformat the drive as FAT-32 since there is a limit on the size of the partition, the maximum file size, and other issues, especially if her Dell's drive is formatted as NTFS (FAT-32 does not support NTFS extended attributes). FAT-32 is unsuitable for backing-up Mac OS X volumes as it cannot preserve the extended attributes (permissions, etc.) employed by Mac OS X.
It's really best if you each have your own external hard drive for backup, as part of implementing a comprehensive Backup and Recovery solution, such as I use and detail in my "Backup and Recovery" FAQ. You also don't want one person inadvertently writing over another person's backups, which could happen if one is not careful. Furthermore, it is often easiest for recovery.
How one handles backup in cross-platform environments is tricky and depends on the native formats employed by the different computers involved, and whether backup will be performed over a network or by directly connecting backup drives to the computers one is backing up.
To enable her Dell to use the Mac-formatted drive, install Mediafour's MacDrive for Windows on the PC. MacDrive for Windows is probably the state-of-the-art application for enabling you to use Mac-formatted disks and hard drives on Windows-based PCs.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

New hard drive won't select as startup disk

I just installed a new hard drive in my 17" iMac flatpanel. I have it set as master, it comes up in Disk Utility, I erased it... again and when I tried to install from a disk, it told me I couldn't use it as the startup disk and had the stop sign with the exclamation point in it.
I was able to restore from a working image I had on my ipod, but when I did the restart, I still got the flashing folder.
Any suggestions would be great!
Chuck

Not sure how you got here. This is the discussion area for the AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS) and wireless networking. Your question has nothing to do with that at all.
You should post your question in the iMac Flat Panel discussion area.

New hard drive won't recognize my iPhone

My hard drive crashed and my replacement hard drive won't recognize my iPhone. I can see all my content, but can't move or replace it. I was able to access content on my iTouch just fine and luckily synched my contacts back into my laptop, but no dice on the phone. Any ideas? BTW, my phone is a jailbroken original iPhone and I am not particularly proficient with this kind of stuff.

Does it boot into Open Firmware with CMDOption+of ?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42642
reset-nvram (press Enter)
set-defaults (press Enter)
reset-all (press Enter)
Have you done a PRAM reset...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

Mail for Mac on new hard drive won't import Mail from old hd

I recently installed an additional hard drive (running Tiger), but I kept my old one (running Panther), too, to use as a backup.
After resolving a few snags, the data and apps transferred over OK, but two days ago I (very foolishly) tried to make a change in the name I use as Administrator (or at least that's what I meant to do), and all the apps on my new hard drive forgot their passwords, preferences, etc.
What a pain!
I'll eventually get all the preferences, etc., set; but Mail on the new hd also lost everything--addresses, trash, sent messages; and that's got me baffled.
My old hd still has Mail on it (including addresses, etc.), but I haven't been able to import data from it to Mail on the new hd.
In the new Mail, under the File menu, when I choose "Import Mailboxes" and select the button for Mail for Mac OS X, then navigate to Mail on my old hd, it's faint and can't be selected.
Suggestions of any kind would really be appreciated. (And from now on, I'll just live with my name being misspelled as Administrator!)
Thanks a lot,
Richard
G4 sawtooth Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Richard,
Welcome to the Discussions.
When trying to import a pre-Tiger mailbox created with Mail, use type "Other", instead of type OSX.
However, if you can replace any copy of the Mail folder on your Tiger drive, and any com.apple.mail.plist in the Preferences folder of your Tiger drive with copies from your Panther drive, Mail will open to say it is ready to import Mailboxes, and will then convert all the mailboxes at once.
However when finished, you will need to check for leftover files, that can become problematic, and to check to see if full conversion took place. See:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=413196
and
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2039086#2039086
Ernie

New hard drive won't install in my macbook pro 13"

Hi everyone
I have recently been having problems with my mac book where I was constantly seeing the spinning beachball. I had wiped the hard drive and was still having this problem so took my mac book to a "genius" at my local mac store who told me that the hard drive was faulty. I was out of warranty so he advised me how to change the hard drive and recommended me to install a crucial 240gb M500 SATA 6Gbps 2.5 SSD. I have now fit this into my mac book and have done internet recovery to allow me to get to Disk Utility. My computer recognises the new Hard drive but when I got to erase the disk to enable me to install the operating system it just hangs attempting to unmount the hard drive. I left it over night and nothing happened. IS there something I have done wrong or is there another way of me installing the operating system onto the new hard drive?
Many thanks in advance

Hi Clinton:
off topic: remembering your beautiful 980GB M500, i want to point to two things that I came repeatedly by:
1. the M500 has more "overprovisioning" than most other Crucial ssds ( I thought that you might want to hear that.
2. Lately I hear more and more comments by respectable manufacturers that Trim in Mac OSX should be avoided: the "enabling" softwares are a bit crippled software and there are many timing faults at the file level communications, which are counterproductive.
So I followed the recent comments of a OWC staff member:
"One way to live without TRIM on OSX is just reduce the volume on the drive and leave the unallocated space...unallocated. If you have a 240GB drive I suggest removing 40GB.
The drive will map this into the over provisioning and move the space in and out of use on the volume very quickly...almost faster than TRIM does
Also remember the drives do have garbage collection and will look after themselves if given the chance too".
So I restored the complete original IOAHCIFamily.kext ( by running a Combo Update) on all my SSDs, and with DiskUtility I dragged the bottom of the startup partition up for about 40GB and left it unallocated (no format).
I remember that you did not install Trim (?), but to be sure I send this to you.
Have fun my friend,
Lex

New Hard drive - won't install windows from recovery disc

I am having an issue with my Satellite L505D-S5965. I replaced the hard drive (upgraded from 250 to 500GB) due to issues with the old one (which had been replaced once already) and am using the recovery disc I made before my other hard drive crashed. When I boot the computer, it says it is loading Windows files, asks for country, etc., but then doesn't display an operating system to choose and asks me to choose drivers. I can't restore it from a system image because I kept getting an error on the old drive when I tried to create one. When I've checked, it says that Windows isn't installed on the computer. I checked the BIOS and it is recognizing the new hard drive. I have also tried booting it up from the DVD/CD using the set of disks I created after I got my new hard drive previously, but it doesn't seem to even recognize them and I can't get to the Toshiba Recovery Wizard. I would order the Toshiba Recovery Media, but with the issues I'm having, I'm not sure that is the fix. I'd hate to be out another $30 on an old computer (since we also had to replace the mother board in the past few months) if I'm not sure that will cure the problem.

Satellite L505D-S5965
Downloads here.
The usual problem is restoring to a drive with advanced-format technology. Nearly all the new drives use it. See this message from three years ago.
See this message for early installation of the driver.
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Hard drive failure, new hard drive won't boot

Toshiba Satellite A665
I bought this laptop 14 months ago, last month the laptop refused to boot. It would say:
Isolinux disk error 05, ax4250, drive 9f
Boot failed
Often times on boot it would just show the black screen with a blinking underscore.
I tried all my known methods and nothing so I took it to a couple of shops. Both said that the hard drive was beyond repairable and not recoverable.
So I bought a new hard drive, installed it with the Toshiba recovery media. The recovery and install on new and drive went well. Had to restart, and upon restart, the original problem came up again- black screen with blinking underscore. I am unable to boot up. Any suggestions?
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AHA, just fan issue?
Tukaine
Sep 23, 2012 10:59 PM
Since the late 2009 iMacs came out, replacing the hard drive has caused the internal Hard Drive Fan to start running at around 6000RPM.
This is due to Apple replacing the external Hard Drive temperature sensor with a proprietary firmware and using the drives internal sensor.
Replacement drives do not contain the firmware to deliver temperature data on the temperature sensor cable.
When the iMac does not receive a good signal from the hard drive it puts the fan at full speed to protect the drive.
If you replace your drive, your iMac will initially seem fine, but soon the fan will begin to speed up to full speed. Resetting the SMC (System Management Controller) will have a temporary effect, but again the fan will speed up.
Fixes people have used in the past included:
Using smcFanControl and the terminal to set a MAX speed for the fan and writing scripts to start this after every sleep/restart.
Shorting the temperature sensor cable (Not a possibility on 2011 iMacs) this tricks the iMac into thinking the drives temperature is very low, hence slow fan speed.
Both these fixes are less then perfect and leave the drive in a dangerous situation with no protection from overheating.
Another option people try is other Fan Control software. These programs will not work for this particular issue as they often only control the base speed, and if they do control the fans actual speed they rely on the temperature reported by the sensor which is now incorrect.
HDD Fan Control
HDD Fan Control works to fix this issue by reading the drives internal temperature using the S.M.A.R.T protocol and set the fans actual speed to a value good to protect the drive.
It runs at startup and continually to always control the fan correctly, prevent the loud fan noise and protect the drive from overheating
Instead of HDDFan Control, get the free SSDFan Control
http://exirion.net/ssdfanctrl/

New Hard Drive Won't Configure

I just bought a new Hard Drive (Crucial 256gb SSD) and physically installed it. However I am having problems configuring it. When I C or option boot and go to Diskutil and erase/partition the drive I get the same error: "POSIX reports: the operation could not be completed. Could not allocate memory. The drive shows up in my Diskutil manager and its S.M.A.R.T. status is verified." I don't know what to do, please help. Thanks

It was not your internal drive that failed or the SSD that has the problem. It is, more then likely, the cable that goes from the drive to the logic board that has failed. Replace that cable and I bet the original drive will work and you will not get that error when you try to configure and install OS X on the SSD.
I bet you have a 2009 model Macbook Pro. Is that correct? Apple used Cheap cables on that year MBP.
If you do a search you will find many have had to replace that cable.

New Hard Drive in MacBook Pro Early 2011, can't reinstall Mountain Lion.

My computer started having issues for some reason, it would just restart randomly about every 5-30 minutes. Disk Utility said that the drive needed to be reformatted, so I went into Recovery mode and erased the Hard Drive and then tried to reinstall it and it crashes EVERY SINGLE TIME I try to install it.
I will say this though, my computer has two hard drives instead of 1. I took out the optical drive and replaced it with a hard drive. For some reason the bootable drive was the optical, so I tried installing it on the main system drive. Well, I can't get Mountain Lion to install on either drive so I went and got a new one, but that one is having problems as well.
I took the computer into Simply Mac and left it with them to get an estimate on a trade in value and to see if they could Mountain Lion to install. Well they did something, because they got it installed, but my computer is still restarting quite often. I want to install it on the system drive (new hard drive) and then have the other drive for memory storage.
IF YOU HAVE ANY ANSWERS OR HELPS PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ABSWER. I'll try my best to give you guys all the information you.
15.4 inch Early 2011 MacBook Pro
2.2 GHz Quad Core i7
16 gig Ram
SSHD 1 TB Hard Drive as main drive
5400 RPM 1 TH Hard Drive as optical drive
1 gig dedicated AMD RADEON (7850?)Graphics

What I am primarily interested in right now is how do I install Mountain Lion on the new Hard Drive. I don't have an Optical Drive in the computer because I put in another Hard Drive for more space in the computer.
I can't boot from an External Disc Drive, I can from a bootable USB drive, but it crashes everytime.
Even downloading from the Internet Recovery doesn't work. When it gets nearer to the end of the download, it says that there is 8000 more hours of download time, and then shortly after that it crashes back to the Main Recovery Screen. It won't install it on the new Hard Drive, this is what it does on the USB stick of Mountain Lion.
Can anyone help me?

New hard drive won't appear as destination for software reinstall

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