hard drive not showing up on disk utility

ok, so u bought a 320GB western digital internal hard drive.

ive installed it perfectly, but when i boot my macbook up and go to the leopard install screen i go to disk utility and my internal drive is no were to be seen.

i've restarted numerous ammounts of times but its still not working, but when i go to system profiler, it shows the drive as my hard drive so it must be regonized.

i dont have an enclosure, is there a way i can get it to work without having to clone my hard drive and buy an enclosure, all i want to do is partition it and make a fresh install of os x.

please give me some help guys, im starting to give up.

When you get to the instal screen, go to the task-bar under tools and open disc utility. You need to format/partition the drive, then you should be able to install the OS.

The problem is, when i go to the install screen and open disk utility the only things showing are the disk drive and the leopard install disk not the hdd

When you say Disk Drive do you mean the DVD/CD Optical drive?

What Macbook is this? Also what model WD drive? It should show up in Disk Utility even if the OSX installer will not see it.

Can you post a picture of the Disk Utility screen?

What model of macbook is it

Apple MacBook Specs (All MacBook Technical Specs) @ EveryMac.com

Have you set the hard disk as a master or slave using the jumpers on the disk? Instructions of how to set this should be included with the drive, try setting it as master

To be honest i cant be bothered to take the old hard drive out, and put the new one in for a screenshot.

Basically its yoru normal leopard install screen but when click continue, usually the drive you want to install the OS to will show up, but theres nothing.

I go to disk utility and there is the optical drive with the leopard install disk and not the drive.
I go to system profiler and i go to the sata option and it shows the drive there.

its weird.

and im not sure what the model number is for the macbook but it did come with Leopard.

Western Digital Scorpio Blue 320GB SATA 8MB Cache 2.5: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo thats the drive.

Ive read the reviews and it does work with Macs

Are both the Sata cable and the power supply firmly in place

what do you mean, im dont have an enclosure. so there is no power cable for the drive.

if you mean the macbooks power supply then yes, its plugged into the macbook.

MichaelBamford said:

what do you mean, im dont have an enclosure. so there is no power cable for the drive.

if you mean the macbooks power supply then yes, its plugged into the macbook.

Click to expand...

He means the cables that connects the drive to the Macbook internally. Is it plugged in correctly, seated correctly etc? I'm not sure what the guts of a MB look like, but I suspect there is either a single SATA cable and a single power cable or perhaps a combine cable that plugs into both slots on the drive itself.

I am pretty sure there is just one cable on the Macbook that does both power and SATA. My Intel Mini is that way also.

That WD should work great. I have almost the same WD in my Intel Mini and it came right up.

Replacing a hard drive in a late model MacBook does not require fixing cables on connectors. You just slide out the old drive and plug in the new one. Afterward you replace the metal shield which was removed to get at the drive in the first place.

To the OP:

That drive should work without any fuss at all. Look at the rear of the drive closely and make sure there are no jumper settings. I'm wondering about that since the drive is advertised as being compatible with the Sony PS3 Play Station. I have a WD 320 GB drive but mine is the Black Scorpio 7200 RPM model - and it has no jumper settings.

If it's not being recognized by Disk Utility, it's possible you received a dud from Amazon. Is there any way you can test the drive without installing it? External case or adapter? If not, ask Amazon for a RMA and have them send you another.

Regards.

Im thinking of just connecting it via an enclosure then partitioning it and using super duper to clone everything onto it.Is there a cable i can connect to the hard drive then to my mac or do i HAVE to buy an enclosure.

@MichaelBamford

I've bought the same drive (WD3200BEVT-22ZCT0) and I can confirm the behaviour you described. This seems to be a problem with the leopard installer since the my old "Tiger install disc" succeeds (HD detected by System Proflier and disk utility) where my Leopard Upgrade Disc (10.5.0) fails (HD can be detected by the System Profiler).

I endend up putting my old HD into an usb enclosure to boot into my old install. The installed Leopard (10.5.6) is able to see the disk in its disk utility. Being unable to do a clean install, I decided to clone my old install onto the new HD for now.


Out of curiosity what version of Leopard does your install disc contain? In my case it is a 10.5.0 "Drop-In" upgrade disk that worked fine with the old HD. I wonder if it works with a more up to date installer disc, especially since the old Tiger Install disc isn't affected by this.

My leopard version is the 10.5 install disks that came with my Macbook. Im thinking is there a way of putting my new HDD into my HP laptop, partitioning it ont here and putting it back into my Macbook, that way its already partitioned and i can install leopard?

You will not be able to partition it the correct way in the HP It needs to be formated to Mac OS X extended ( journaled ) I wpuld get an enclosure as they are inexpensive and check the hard drive that way but it sure sounds like a doa drive.

Hope this helps
Clay

Update: After getting several issues with waking from sleep, I decided to put the old HD back in for now. The WD disk works flawless inside the USB enclosure but my MBP definitly has some issues with it.

I have the same external drive and had same problem. Have you formatted your new internal drive using the OSX disc? Only when I have formatted the new internal drive that it was recognized and showed on the desktop. Hope this helps.

Hi MichaelBamford, check out following resource that may help you to find solution:

Hard Drive not Recognized/ Found/ Detected/ Accessible