Trouble Upgrading Mac Mini HD From Time Machine

Greetings,

I am having trouble upgrading to a new hard drive on my A1176 Mac Mini (2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 667 SDRAM). I have done this process before with no trouble when I upgraded the factory installed hard drive to a 500 GB drive a year ago. However, this time I am having trouble with the install process.

So, I have opened the case and installed the new 1TB Samsung HD (this one specifically: Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive )

When I turn on the computer, it recognizes my external hard drive and wants to know if I want to restore my latest Time Machine Backup. I select that option and click the latest date. **FYI: I am running the latest version of OS X 10.7.4**

Then I am asked to select a destination for the restore.

HERE IS THE PROBLEM: the new hard drive is not an option (in fact, there aren't any options).

I checked the system information and the computer is recognizing the new drive, but it won't let me choose it as a destination.

What am I doing wrong? I am at a total loss.

Thanks in advance for reading and responding.

I think what is happening is that the drive has not been formatted yet therefore it is not being recognized by the restore routine. Are you booting from the external drive that you mentioned or a Lion recovery partition? If so, you should be able to format the new drive then finish the recovery process.

Just a follow up, I did need to format the drive. Once I did that, I was all set. Thanks for the advice.