Installing OS onto New Hard Drive

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Hey Everyone

I'm not use to the apple terms in explaining things but please bare with me, So I purchased a 13 inch Macbook 2 years ago, during those years I used bootcamp to use it for windows. During my last moments with the macbook, I was leaving it on constantly (about 3 weeks straight) to use for torrents, playing games, movies etc.. all of a sudden the laptop turns off on me and when I reboot it I got the grey folder message with the question mark, after a while I decided to reboot the system with the installation disk, as I was rebooting pass the agreement page follow by the "select a destination" - on this page I would let the laptop sit for awhile to see if it would detect my harddrive, but unfortunately it never showed up not only that I saw that I drained my battery so it would only give me 3 mins to use. So being stubborn as I was I decided to just put it away and never hoped to see the laptop again until now.

As of now I finally decided to fix the problem, I have now replaced the battery and also went outside to pick up a Seagate Momentus 320g hard drive for the laptop. Using the installation disk I'm able to get all the way to the "select a destination" page but the new harddrive cannot be selected and I also checked "disk utility" but the harddrive did not show there either. Previously I took the new harddrive and used an external case and formatted it to extended journal before placing it in the laptop

Sorry for the long explanation but here is my question:

How come my macbook won't detect the new hard drive in order to install the OS?

Thank You
 

chscag

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How come my macbook won't detect the new hard drive in order to install the OS?

The new hard drive should be detected even if it's not formatted. Check the following:

1. You didn't install it correctly. Kind of hard to mess that up, but there have been folks who for some reason didn't properly install the drive.

2. The SATA cable which goes from the hard drive connector to the logic board may be defective. The cable is exposed to a lot of heat, dries out, and breaks.

3. The EMI insulators (there's two of them, on the inside of the drive cavity, may be out of place. If either one is out of place the drive will not line up to the connector.

4. You have a bad hard drive. (unlikely, but it happens.)
 

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