New HDD not readable

[jonnyqwest]

I need a little help.... here is the problem.

I have a Macbook 2ghz core duo and I have recently bought the seagate Momentus 5400.3 160 HDD as an internal drive upgrade from NewEgg. Once I got it, I put it into a USB external inclosure. My plan was to connect it to my Mac, run "superduper", then just swap the drives. Easy right? Well once I pluged in the new drive in to the Mac with the USB case it poped up as "this disk is not readable by this computer". I thought, great it's windows formated. I pluged it into a windows computer and it was also not recognized. I have heard of people haveing problems with this drive so I would not be suprized if it was bad out of the box, but I would like to give it a fighting chance. If any of you have any ideas or inputs that would be great. Thank you.

Jonathan

 

[Stretch]

Does it show up in Disk Utility?

 

[mac57]

This is a new drive that has never worked before, so any number of things may be wrong. The easiest would be that it is simply a bad drive. Another - you have a power issue with the enclosure. Do you hear the drive spin up when you plug it in?

 

[jonnyqwest]

It is a new drive and the case does work. I had a friend format it for windows. I don't have my boot disk so I can not proform disk utility untill I get back home ( I am in Iraq right now). Once I get home I can throw in my disk, reformat it, and off I go. The drive does work. If i have any more problems once I get home I wil ask for more help. Thank you all fo ryour quick replies.

Jonathan

 

[Stretch]

Disk Utility is build into OS X. It's sitting in your utilities folder in Applications.

 

[mac57]

...so you should be able to try reformatting without waiting to get back. Let us know how it goes.

Are you in the Armed Forces there in Iraq? Without going into the politics of why we are there, let me just acknowledge that we ARE there. I thank you, and all of our troops over there, for doing their country's bidding. You are in a tough spot and I want you to know that you have my support for one!

...please, no flames! This is NOT an attempt to start a political argument, just an expression of appreciation for the sacrifices our troops are willing to undertake in the name of our country.

 

[jonnyqwest]

Thank you for your support in this and in my duties. I do realize that it is under applications but my OS is slightly corrupted. I can't veiw or change any of my preferences, and I no longer have any utilities. I am stuck. I did make a bootable back up of my drive to a seperate external, just incase it desides to go. Once I get my hands on a clean copy of OSX, I can reinstall on this drive and the back up. I can then reformat my new drive. My hands are tied unless one of you know what file I lost and can email it to me. I did a search but there is nothing on the internet. Any way I just hope it lasts untill I get home. Thanks again.

Jonathan

 

[MacHeadCase]

Can you trash the Finder plist file?

Path is this:

Macintosh HD ---> Users ---> Your User Account ---> Library ---> Preferences ---> com.apple.finder.plist

Just drag it into the trash and restart.

Also download MainMenu and empty all caches (system, user, fonts, etc.), deep clean the system as well and let us know how this goes.

 

[mac57]

johnnyqwest, just to be really sure, I am going to go for the long shot here...

Disk Utility isn't under Applications, it is under Utilities (which itself *is* under Applications). Click on any open area of desktop (just to be sure you have Finder as the foremost program) and then type SHFT+CMD+U. This should bring up the Utilities folder. Does this work on your machine, or is your OS X too damaged for that? If it does work, you should be able to find Disk Utility in the resulting Finder window.

 

[jonnyqwest]

Yep, it's gone. I must have lost it some how. I am stuck for now. Thanks.