Strange Issues replacing damaged HD on Macbook Pro

[cinemac]

I am currently doing humanitarian film work in South Sudan and began having issues with my MBP that Disk utility indicated as being HD failure. Luckily, someone traveling to my location from the US brought me a new Seagate 500GB Momentus XT drive.

I replaced the damaged drive (also this model of Seagate, 7 months old). After installing the new HD, I booted up the computer from the Snow Leopard DVD. After navigating the menus, when asked which drive to install the OS on, no drives appeared. Something else strange was that at the initial OS install window, I was unable to access disk utilities and other functions. My mouse could not click on anything (this is new). I could, however, use key commands to navigate the menus.

I have the old HD copied onto an external drive through Time Machine. I cannot boot from that drive, though.

I am lost and don't know what to do next. The closest service location is Kampala, Uganda. The trip alone to service would cost hundreds of dollars. Any help would be amazing.

 

[robduckyworth]

My guess is that the HDD isn't formatted yet. Before trying to install Snow Leopard, while booted to the CD, go along to the top menu bar, and select Disk Utility, under Utilities.

find the new drive, and select Erase..

then format the drive as Mac OS Journaled. then your drive should show up and allow the install.

If you can't do this via booting to disk, see if there is another Mac you can do it on, or with an external caddy.

 

[cinemac]

What is bothering me the most is that I cannot access the disk utility tab when booted from the OS disk. The tabs appear at the top menu bar but I cannot click on them with the cursor or access them. I can only navigate the install menu with the tab, enter, and spacebar keys. I don't know how I can format the drive.

 

[robduckyworth]

you may have to try and find another computer to format it with first in that case, by using an external USB HDD caddy.