Replaced hard drive; now Macbook wont boot from CD (or USB for that matter)

Looking for a genius. I've tried holding down "C" during startup until the option to boot from CD shows up, but my install disk spins, then stops. Does this about 3 times and the Macbook spits it out (I held "C" the entire time). I've also tried holding "alt/option" key with an external drive attached via USB but the option to boot from there never came up either. I tool it into the Apple store earlier today and was told only the hard drive was bad. Now that I've bought, opened, and installed the new HD, I'm concerned I've wasted that purchase. Anyone? Thanks so much.

Startup your Mac while holding down the Option key. That should launch the Startup Manager window where you can select the startup disk then click Restart.
A flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac < includes info for repairing the startup disk
A Windows install disc will not boot your Mac.

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Replaced hard drive, now can't boot from install disc to restore backup

Yesterday, my hard drive died (disk warrior informed me, that HD had irrecoverable errors, and my iMac would shut down unless it was booted from the Disk Warriorr disc).
Today, I have a new internal HD professionally installed. And when I brought it home, and installed Snow I got an error at the end of the installation "OS could not be installed, restart or choose start up disk" or something to that effect. However, on licking OK I got the snow music, and welcome movie nd eerything seemed to be working fine.
I can log in normally and have get to my desktop, but on trying to boot from the Snow Leopard disk (10.6), I get to the gray screen with the apple logo and hang. I have tried resetting Pram/firmware and also ran the fdisk command (twice).
It seems too much of a concidence that my hard drive and now my disc drive would die all in span of two days? I can hear the disc noise, but as I mentioned I cant get beyond the gray screen on trying to boot from the disc.
Suggestions?
Late Nov '07 intel iMac. And I did update the OS to 10.6.4. Install disc is 10.4.

Return it to the repair station.

Replaced faulty hard drive now can't boot from Snow Leopard.

Hi there,
As it says I replaced my internal WD 250gb drive in my late 2006 2.16ghz imac . I followed the tutorials on the net to the tee yet upon trying to boot from Snow Leopard after firing it back up all I get is the Apple logo and the timer . I've tried holding C to no avail . I've held Alt to select the OSX disc yet it still won't boot to get me to Disc Utility . I've even put the old hard drive back in . When I hold Alt on start up it shows the drive and the disc but will boot from neither when selected . I've tried to get the Snow Leopard disc to eject so I can try my originals but it won't even do that . I'm convinced I haven't damaged anything but I'm at my wits end ! Does anybody have any ideas how to get the Leopard disc out so I can at least try from my originals ? The drive I've installed is compatible it's a 1tb WD . I also triple checked all the connections and they all seam sound . Really appreciate your help lads as I wanted to give the iMac to my daughter when we get a new one .

You will first need to prep the new drive using Disk Utility on the original 10.4 Disc or Retail upgrade 10.6 DVD. It needs to be Partition GUID Partition Table and Format it Mac OS Extented (Journaled) before you can install and run OS X on it.
1. Boot from your SL install DVD or Bootable Clone and open Disk Utility.
2. Highlight the new HD in the list of drives and select the Partition tab.
3. Under Volume Scheme select 1 Partition and click on the Options... button.
4. Select GUID Partition Table in the drop down window and click OK.
5. Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and click the Apply button.
6. Once thats done, then you can do a clean Install, Restore from TM or a Bootable Clone.

Replace hard drive, now will not boot

Pavilion dv7-6b78us was running windows ultimate
Had to put a new hard drive the factory one died unexpectedly. Had a 700 gig I think. now have a 350 gig. replaced HD and proceeded to run all the test to make sure it was alright. When I tried to install windows I keep getting No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key. I have tried setting it to boot of the internal CD/DVD, didn't do any thing, tried booting of a flash drive copied the OS to the flash drive and set it to boot from Flash memory, still did nothing. Set it to boot from an external cd\dvd usb drive put a new copy of windows in the drive still nothing. Have been in roxio to make a boot disk and copied windows 7 again still nothing happened. I am a collage student and I need to get this thing up and running, any help would be greatly appreciated

Having same problem! I need help also!

New hard drive...wont boot from cd

hello,
i just installed a new hard drive. when i powered on and tried to eject the cd bay, it would not. i opened it via paper clip, installed cd and restarted holding "c" but it would not boot from cd. power button is pulsing and fans accelerated, so i powered off. 2 x 1 gig of ram in top two slots. cd drive light does not flash when holding c button.
any help would be great.
thanks

Have you done a PRAM reset, CMDOption+pr...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
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)
How to reset the SMU on a Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) or Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) ...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1436
Earlier G3, G4, G5 models...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1939

How to replace hard drive in macbook pro?

How to replace hard drive in macbook pro?

Hi S,
If you have the newer unibody style, it's very easy. If it's one of the earlier models, it's considerably more difficult. Go to Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info > Hardware and find your Model Identifier. Then go to ifixit.com, or powerbookmedic.com or macsales.com or youtube or others and there are illustrated, detailed directions. Good luck to you and post back if you have further questions.

Lenovo s10e wont boot from hdd or usb when warm

lenovo s10e wont boot from hdd or usb when warm
I have ownd my Lenvo S10e about 1 year now
and now it begins to **bleep**in up
I have tryd with and without hdd and booting up live linux from USB Works good untill the lenovo s10e begins to be hot, then i got to boot then blank screen
same hapen when using the hdd,
I have bin usubg the XBMC-9.11 live linux
Its an media senter for linux
I use it to see movies onto my bigscreen tv and use my linux server as media server
When the lenovo is coold i can start xbmc no problem
I take a movie look on it when the movir is finisht and i go back Whole computer is hangup
Now i cant doing any more looking on movie untill the computer has bin coold again
This is happening with and with out HDD installed !
So what is this ?
Is it som thing that be to work ?
It is like it cuts of SATA and USB when it worm !
Sorry for my bad english..

Yes i did try to get the temp info from lm-sensors but did not get any cpu temp info or fan info.
I can tell that the Fan dont work at all running Linux !
Fan only works with Windows ! Why i dont know
I tryd my Ubuntu 9.10 - 10.04 without Sacsess, fan still off
Booted up Windows Xp Pro from a Usb stick and the fan started from then boot of windows install untill i self shoutdown the computer !
So linux dont have any drivers to control the Lenovo S10e fan ?

Macbook Wont boot from hard drive. Help??

I was typing on my Macbook and the whole computer just froze with the rainbow wheel. So i hold down the power button to force a shut down. When i try to boot it back up it game me a Apple logo but then turn into a X. I try to turn it on holding down the Option key and only the recovery HD came up. Then i try to install Osx onto the Hard drive and it wont recognize it. Then i went to disk utility and The HD is Grey out then i Try Repair Disk but it doesnt work and gives me errors. Then i plug in a different Hard Drive and it Boot Up fine so i know its not the computer its the hard drive issue. Btw i used a software to recover the files and everthing showed up so the content is still there but the software cost $99 to use and im not paying that much. Does anyone know how to solve this Issue? I have important files on it. If the hard drive is dead then is there any free software that i can use to recover the files?

Since you were able to read at least some of the files, I'm thinking you may have an issue with the SATA cable, which is fairly common. The easy test is to pull the hard drive and put it in an external enclosure. If it works, the SATA cable is probably the issue.
Is it a 13 or 15 inch?

Mid-2009 MacBook Pro sees internal SATA hard drive, but will not boot from or format

I inherited a Mid-2009 MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53 GHz model) with a very strange issue.
It first presented itself as not being able to boot from the internal SATA hard drive that came with the computer. Nothing I tried could get it to boot, so I assumed the file system was corrupted beyond repair and booted from a CD to try to format the drive. Disk Utility on the CD would not format the drive, giving me strange error messages like "Unable to write to the last block of the device".
At this point I figured the drive itself must be toast, so I pulled it out and put another known-good SATA hard drive in, booted from CD, and attempted to format. Again, same error messages and an unsuccesful format.
So I had the bright idea of formatting one of the drives in an external enclosure and then putting it in the MBP to see if OS X would even install. No dice. Get a cryptic error message before installation even begins.
So I installed OS X on the drive in the external enclosure and put it in the MBP, and it attempts to boot, but never goes anywhere.
So to sum up, the symptoms I'm seeing:
MacBook Pro CAN see internal SATA hard drives.
MacBook Pro WILL NOT boot from any internal SATA hard drive and cannot format or install OS X to any internal SATA hard drive.
MacBook Pro WILL boot from any CD or external device and seems to work properly otherwise.
At this point I'm thinking it's one of two things: the hard drive ribbon cable or the SATA controller on the logic board.
Since the MacBook Pro seems to work completely fine other than this one issue, and will boot properly from both external devices and the CD (also a SATA device), I'm thinking and hoping that it's just the hard drive ribbon cable. From my searches online, I've heard that this batch of MacBook Pros is known to have issues with the hard drive ribbon cable, but it seems in most cases this manifests itself by the Mac not being able to see a drive at all.
I've done quite a bit of troubleshooting to get to this point, but right now I'm just looking for any feedback at all. Specifically I'd love to know a way I can easily test to see whether it's the logic board or the cable.

UPDATE: An interesting development!
I just tried a third known-good SATA hard drive, one which I believe supports SATA I only (but I'm not sure), and unlike the other drives that the Mac sees but cannot properly interact with, the Mac can't even see this one when I put it inside.
Frustrating as this may be, I believe I'm actually getting closer to a solution since my symptoms now appear to be closely aligned with people having SATA ribbon cable issues.
Onward!

Hard drive failure - how to boot from replacement?

the hard drive in my Mac Mini has become unbootable - I've gone through all the options suggested in Apple support docs including trying to boot from install disk. I don't get a startup screen to select where to boot from, jus the gray spinning gear. I fear the drive is dead. It was preceeded by strange behavior of permissions. Most of what I read is advice on installing a replacement drive but copying info from the old. How does one create a new bootable drive? I'm thinking of replacing the hard drive with SSD. Thanks Rich

AHT (apple-hardware-test), at least on 10.9-era macs, seems to do *no* tests at all of the hard-driver or SSD. You have to use other testing methods, to run SMART long and short self-tests of SSD and HD as detailed below, and google is your friend.
=== Details ===
For AHT: Power-off. Hold-down "option" and "d" keys, and keep holding them down while you power on. After a minute or two it will boot Apple Hardware Test from internet, at least for 10.9-era hardware. Use a network cable if you can. With known-bad or missing hard-drives, the AHT still says "no problems found".
For example, I have had 3 new macs in 3 weeks that all have hard-drives that always report "read-failure" to SMART tests. The Apple Hardware Test apparently does NOT do any testing of hard-drive(s) at all. Not only did say "No problems found" with the bad-drive(s), if you remove the hard-drive completely it still reports "No problems found"! You may want to run some long SMART tests on hard-drive(s) weekly, even if they are brand new... the 3 that failed on me were different brands from different stores: all reported "read-failure" in around 30 hours. So I conclude that consumer-drives have very poor quality... in effect, the end-user is doing the QA tests by using the drive as apparently little QA goes on at factory. And/or the shipping folks are really throwing those things around hard.
To run SMART tests on a mac, you can "brew install smartmontools" and "brew install gsmartcontrol". Or if you are not a command-line person, you can get a 14-day trial of Drive-DX disk-health tester (looks like ja smartctl-gui-wrapper) from:
http://binaryfruit.com/drivedx They also have a links to a SMART-SAT driver that lets you run smart tests on almost any newer usb-enclosed HD or SSD. Nice
If mac won't boot at all from disk, you can rescue/recover by booting from usb or live-cd such as gparted-live-cd/usb (which boots most intel macs as it has the guid bootability):
http://www.ehow.com/how_8505863_boot-gparted-cd-mac.html
PartedMagic is really nice and boots every intel mac I've tried it on, but is no longer free. Right on desktop is "Disk Health" (which runs gsmartcontrol). Also has ddrescue, testdisk, photorec, etc. Sees HFS+ just fine.

Replaced hard drive now what help

I =have the crt imac snow edition, I replaced hard drive all I get is a blue globe on start up, I have the software restore disc have placed it in nothing happens tried the holding down c key to start from the cd, Nothinh happens I have read numerous threads hoping to find the answer.

First of all, are you sure the CD you inserted is truely bootable and designed for your iMac (and not specific to another different Mac)?
Anyways to reset PRAM, while turning on your iMac, hold down Option + Cmd + P + R (I know, hard to do that 4 key combo).. and you should hear some "boing" sound, wait until you hear two "boings" then you can release and try to hold down 'C' again to boot your CD... I think that's how that works... someone can correct me or clarify if I'm not 100% correct....
ANdrew

Replaced hard drive now error

Hi all,
I replaced hard drive in my t61 series w wdscorpio sata320
gb, when i try and boot up i get this "initializing link, media test failure check cable; excluded from boot order ATA HDD2, ATAPI CD1? what does this mean?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

that means there is no OS (operating system) detected on the hdd. So you just need to install the Operating System.
Regards,
Jin Li
May this year, be the year of 'DO'!
I am a volunteer, and not a paid staff of Lenovo or Microsoft

I replaced hard drive in macbook pro and when turning on i get a blinking question mark

just replaced hard drive on my '09 macbook pro and rebooted to get the blinking question mark. what do i do? not sure i have the installation disk. i had this happen once on an older macbook and was able to figure it out but i can't remember what i did.

Schedule an appointment with a Genius the SSD is gone.

Macbook wont boot from new hard drive.

I installed a new Western Digital 500GB hard drive into my Macbook Pro (2006 edition). The computer boots up, but it just stays at the screen with the apple and the thing circling underneath it. It won't go any further than that. I have to boot from my external hard drive to get to the Operating System.
Also it won't shut down nor restart unless I hold down the power button.
I installed Snow Leopard 10.6 on the new hard drive. The longest I waited was like 10 minutes. Should also note that there is a CD stuck in my CD/DVD optical drive (I used an external drive to install snow leopard)...I don't know if that's interfering. It didn't interfere with my old hard drive.
I've also used Disk Utility. It says the disk needs repairing, so I repair it, and it says successfully repaired, but I can't shut down or restart the computer, so I have to shut it down by holding the power button. When I turn it back on, it says it needs repairing again. Maybe it's not saving because of the improper shut down?
Please help

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Did you format the new drive before trying to install the OS?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1885474&tstart=60
Try that, and if still no joy, you might have a defective drive. If so, WD will replace it under warranty.
Good luck!

Replaced Hard Drive in MacBook Pro - now TC wants to back up whole drive

I replaced the 120 Gig hard drive in my MacBook Pro with a 320 Gig drive and cloned the old drive back to the new one. Time Machine now wants to treat this as a different drive from the one I have backed up on my Time Capsule. How do I convince TM to backup the new drive incrementally to the old image on the TC rather than creating a whole new back up?

The cloning software you used probably does not copy the journaling entries. Since TM relies on the event-driven journaling entries, it has no choice but to start a new full backup all over again.

Replaced hard drive; now Macbook wont boot from CD (or USB for that matter)

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