Setting up a hard drive for OS X

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Can someone please help me to set up my hard drive for installing OS X. I am new to macs and bought a 2nd hand one but the hard drive has failed and I can't seem to get the new one into a state where the installer will allow me to load OS X onto it.
I just keep getting a message saying that :- "You cannot install Mac OS X onto this volume. Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume".
 
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Have you firstly gone and formatted the new drive using Disc Utility? I'm pretty sure that this is the first step before installing OS X.
 
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I've tried some of the options in the disk utility menu, but not being familiar with macs, I'm not sure what options I need to choose. I have also tried to set the disk up using MacDrive but still no luck.
 
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It's a macpro I bought from a friend, he couldn't get the hang of it and got himself a pc instead!!!, trouble is he invalidated the warranty by opening it up (curiosity i guess) so when the hard drive failed he had nowhere to go. I've been trying to get this new hard drive going but no luck, it's bigger than the old one but I can't see why that would make any difference.
 
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As long as it's not an IDE drive it should be fine ... Mac Pro's take SATA. What options for formatting do you see in Disc Utility?
 
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Thanks Pulse-8, I think I've got it sorted now. I deleted the partition on my old pc and it's now installing. I think the MacDrive program must have set it up as a secondary disk instead of an install disk. Once I let the disk utility take care of the whole thing it managed to partition the drive and get on with the installation. Looks like I'm about an hour away from being pc free at last!
 

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