Formatting New Hard Drive(Installing Snow Leopard)

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Hi there.

I recently posted asking about restoring my OS through a flash drive, but since then I purchased a Snow Leopard install disc and felt like this could finally get my 2007 iMac up and running.

I just installed a new WD Caviar 260gb hard drive and booted from the install disc, but after choosing a language, a window pops up telling me that I can't install OS X onto my computer.

After that I went to disk utility and discovered that my new hard drive wasn't being recognized. All there is are the instal disc images and a media drive with 0 bytes. I looked under the SATA dialog and it says that there was an error while scanning for devices. So, I'm assuming this is happening because the hard drive is most likely not formatted, but since disk utility can't see the new drive, I can't format it within the install cd.

So now I guess I need to find some way to format it so I can install the OS, but I'm not quite sure of a way to do this. Does anyone know of some way I can format it using DiskWarrior or some other utlity? Any help is appreciated.

(P.S. If there isn't way to accomplish this, I might just end up going to best buy and have them format it for MBR, then I should be able to format with GUID from disk utility for the install and boot. If that's the correct way to go about it, I'm not sure. Advice please?)
 

chscag

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Even an unformatted (blank) disk will be "seen" by Disk Utility so that it can be formatted. So that's not the problem.

Open up the iMac again and make sure the WD hard drive has been installed correctly. Check the cables and connectors. Also, what kind of Snow Leopard disk do you have? In order to use it on your iMac it should be the retail version not a model specific version.
 
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I'm guessing I didn't get a retail install disc. I bought it on ebay. I didn't even realize that I would need the retail version as opposed to a cd that says it installs OS X. I'm not %100 percent sure, but reading on the install disc, it says. iMac, OS X Install DVD, OS 10.6.4, Disc Version 5. Also, on the right side it says, Software is part of a hardware bundle purchase. That's what caught my attention when you mentioned the retail version. I suppose I'll need to find another disc that would work.

Also, I suppose I might as well mention that, at boot, my iMac has started making three separate beeps. It does it again when the Apple appears from the install disc. I read that this had something to do with my ram, but while looking at the system profiles, it says that my ram status is okay. Any thoughts? Thanks again.
 
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Not a silver grey system disc for another computer is it? Will never work if so. You need to purchase Snow Leopard from the Apple Store. And yes eBay simply abounds with sellers dumping this type of software alas.
 
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The disc does say it's for iMac. It' copyrighted 2010 and I got my iMac in 2007 so I guess that is the problem. I'll just have to get Snow Leopard from the Apple store. Wish I had realized that I wasn't getting what I needed from eBay though. Could have saved me some green. But thirty bucks for the retail version from Apple isn't bad. Thanks for the help. If anyone has any comments on the beeps, let me know.
 

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Buy the retail disk from Apple first and give it a try. If you get the three beeps on boot during the POST again, shut the iMac down and remove the memory cover and reseat the modules. Could be a loose module from when you took things apart to change out the hard drive. Keep your fingers crossed. :)
 

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