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I have a 13" Macbook Pro and last weekend the hard drive crashed. Took it and had the data saved, bought a Seagate Momentus XT Hard Drive for it. Installed the HD and put the install disk in and it will not recognize the HD. Any suggestions?
 
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Loading OS

Having trouble getting the OS to load on new Hard Drive. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your time.
 
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What you need to do is insert the install disc, restart your Mac, and as soon as you hear the chime, hold down the C key, and don't release it until you see the spinning gear.
-Select language and click continue.
-Select utilities>disk utility in the menu bar (this takes a few seconds to appear).
-Select the HD at the top of the list on the left.
-Click erase tab.
-Format Mac Os Extended (Journaled).
-Name Macintosh HD.
-Click erase.
-Quit disk utility menu, and continue with installation, or, you can select utilities in the Menu bar again and select restore from Time Machine Backup.
 

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Note: Merged crossposts.
 
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What you need to do is insert the install disc, restart your Mac, and as soon as you hear the chime, hold down the C key, and don't release it until you see the spinning gear.
-Select language and click continue.
-Select utilities>disk utility in the menu bar (this takes a few seconds to appear).
-Select the HD at the top of the list on the left.
-Click erase tab.
-Format Mac Os Extended (Journaled).
-Name Macintosh HD.
-Click erase.
-Quit disk utility menu, and continue with installation, or, you can select utilities in the Menu bar again and select restore from Time Machine Backup.

Just went through these steps and got an error message. "POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. Cannot allocate memory.
 
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Back to my old 2.2GHz C2D MB after selling my MBP and wondering what my next Mac will be :)
Post back if you find a fix.
 
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No fix yet. I have even installed the old hard drive to try and clean it out and install the new OS and still have the same error message. What to do?????
 

bobtomay

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Do you have a Tiger or Leopard disc? Try using one of those to do the format.
 
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If the old HD died, I don't know how you would have success.
If you had a HD that you know to be fine, I can see how that's would rule out the new HD being defective (which is possible).
I am wondering if it is hardware related (connectors, etc.), if it's not just a problem with OS X 10.6 as all the links that I have found point to.
Hopefully as bobtomay asked, if you have either of those, or access to, maybe that will get the ball rolling.
 
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I don't have either of the two, just Snow Leopard. I am just about at my wits end and ready to buy a new one. I have tried to solve this problem now for three days working on it about 8-10 hours a day and still nothing. I have been to Google I know 50 times doing research and nothing I have tried has helped.
Thanks again for your time and help both of you.
 

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Think I'd call Apple and set an appointment - even out of warranty.

All the workarounds I've found relate to external drives via USB. But if it's got problems formatting an internal drive - it's either return the drive or call Apple.
Not sure I even found a single post related to an internal drive.

I did find just as many posts related to this same error on Windows machines also.
That really leads me to believe it's a hard drive issue even though some found work arounds. Especially, when folks are reporting multiple fomatting utilities giving the same error on the same drives.

Work arounds incl'd:
Use Tiger
Use Leopard
Use Snow Leopard
Use a different USB enclosure.
Connect it via firewire.
Connect it via eSATA.
Format the drive on a windows machine and then put it back in your Mac. (However, some found that Windows would not format the drive either.)

Personally, if I got a drive that won't format and returns an error - the drive is going back for replacement. It seems that most of the ones I saw were Seagates by a large proportion.

I've formatted multiple drives both internally and externally via USB, FW and eSATA with Snow Leopard - all versions of it - so, don't think I agree with the ones that say it's a Snow Leopard issue.
 

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