installing hard drive

Hi, ive recently tried installing a WD 500gb internal drive. i set up the drive ready to restore using superduper and Disk utility is calling it 'media' and that it has 0bytes available..what can i do????

Perhaps you need to format it first.

I haven't done anything like this for a while so might not be on the money here but if you are installing the OS on to a blank brand new HDD, I think you insert the install media, hold C or what ever it is to make it boot from CD and then once you get to screen to do installs, click on Tools and choose Disk Utility - from here you can format the drive into a Mac Format.

If you are adding this drive to an existing mac (internal or external) and what to copy one drive to the other (for example) then again you need to use Disk Utility. In Leopard, press Command+Space and type Disk, this should identify Disk Utility , click on the app in the spotlight search results.

From here you can partition and format the new drive.

It will probably appear in the left hand side as WD and then a model number, click it and the right window should offer a button partition. From here you can select all or part of the disk, give it a name (if required) and select the formatting you'd like to use - probably Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Once in Mac format, superduper etc should be able to copy or restore an image to it.

when i start up it goes that it needs to be initialized etc. so i click initialize.

then i go to disk utility and it calls the drive 'media' and all the tabs are pretty much greyed out. i look down the bottom and it says the capacity is 0 bytes.

is there any way to fix the drive? what should i do because i bought it brand new off ebay.

Normally installing a larger drive in a Macbook and cloning the old to it is straight forward. This is what I do. Download Carbon Copy Cloner (free) on to the original drive. Remove it, fitting the new 500 GB. Attach the original drive to an external SATA drive case or a SATA to USB adapter, connect to the Macbook. Start the Macbook holding down the ALT key, select your original drive, it should be the only one showing and boot from it. Change the original drives name to save confusing with the new one if they were to both have the same names. Run Disk Utility, initialise the new drive as Macintosh HD. Run Carbon Copy Cloner and select the old drive to clone to the new. Superduper should perform the same functions as Carbon Copy Cloner. This works every time for me.

While I was typing other posts appeared. If you have initialised a brand new drive from Disk Utility and it shows 0 bytes then it's faulty. Was the drive in a sealed anti static bag, was it showing unititialised when you got it? All the WD 2.5" SATA drives I've used were in anti static bags, then packed in foam with a centre cut out, this was in a brown box with a white label at one end displaying the drives model and S/N.

it was in an anti static bag but that is all because i bought it from a seller on ebay. should i contact him to say that it is faulty? what should i say