Hard Drive Upgrade and White Screen HELP

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Jan 3, 2010
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Souhern California
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook 13 unibody Snow Leopard
So I am fairly new to mac, but not new to computers or hardware at all. I ran out of space on my macbook 13" (unibody bought in 2008). So went to upgrade my hard drive.

I used Super Duper, via external USB case, formatted drive first, partitioned it, then used SuperDuper to copy the whole drive. All went smooth. I could not boot from external to check it.

Put the new disk (Seagate 500g 2.5 SATA / 5400) in the mac, and white screen with question mark. Ok, so doesnt recognize the drive i assume. I boot up again holding the option key down, does nothing and does not prompt me to select a drive or boot options. I put the old drive in the external case, same thing except this time now i only get white screen no question mark. Nothing works, i tried holding down all these keys every post talks about and am amazed. I hate Windows, but atleast it will always go into the bios when you want it to.

Can anyone help me? If you clone your dive successfully it should boot up and presto right?

Thank you for those that respond...

What is the deal.
 
OP
D
Joined
Jan 3, 2010
Messages
3
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0
Points
1
Location
Souhern California
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook 13 unibody Snow Leopard
Ok, call off the dogs. I resolved it. Seems that Mac doesnt recognize external hard drives through USB even if they have been formatted. I have seen alot of conflicting info on boards regarding this topic. Most of which saying older ones wouldn't and newer intel based ones would. Mine wouldnt.

Anyhow, solution was to put old drive back in, hook up new duplicate drive through USB, boot from old one INTO the OS, look for mounted new drive in USB. Go to preferences and select HD to boot from that new disk as default. Shut down. Swap disks with new one in Mac. Boot, and you are there.

Why "option" tab doesnt bring me into any boot menu regardless boggles me. You would think that there would be some type of bios commands that overide anything. This is dinfitely the one (and perhaps only) area that Windows has it over Mac. They mac everytihng so good and simple that they give you very little lower level control if you ever need it (or want it). But then again, seldom need it. I do love Mac and have already committed to not spending another dime on Windows. Nothing.
 

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