Can't find my Macintosh HD

Hello everybody. This is my first ...... minute here in Mac forums so be kind to me . Anyways, here's my problem.

About 3 weeks ago, I decided to reinstall my mac because my mac has been lagging soooo much. Dropping to 0 fps every 10 seconds or so in most of my apps and freezing when I'm watching a video. The occasional rainbow wheel during videos.So I asked some guys in the internet and this very helpful person gave me an advice. He told me to either do something about my graphic drives or reinstall my OS. He even told me to make backups just in case something... like this happened but I had no external hard disks, no real experience or anything so I didn't use Time Machine or iCloud. I decided to reinstall without the backup.

I went to recovery mode by holding down the option key and i reinstalled my mac. It took about 5 hours. 3 hours into the reinstallation, it cancelled and i forgot what it said. Kinda frustrated, I reinstalled it again but this time it took 28 hours or so, so I thought that was a bug and i restarted my mac and retried but that time it took 2 thousand hours. Kinda upset, I gave up and decided to deal with the lag. When I started up my normal hard disk, iTunes (hehe I renamed Macintosh HD into that), it would stay in the apple sign for ages, with the stupid spinning wheel. It wouldn't startup so that gave me a heart attack (naturally) I didn't know what to do, I was so scared so i just left my mac there, in the apple sign for the whole night, hoping that someday, it would startup. The next morning, the mac ran outta battery (it was full) and when i charged it , it started up into the apple sign. So i just tried a bunch of stuff after that

I went to Disk Utility and I repaired and verified it, no problem, I tried to reinstall the OS over and over again but it increases the time, from 4000 hours to 30 hours to 9000 hours to 40 hours so, being the non-mechanical guy, I went out and had my mac checked. The dude did some things and after some testings, he told me to reformat my mac coz the hard disk can't be saved. Kinda bummed out but i thought it was the only way so i did it anyways. However I didn't do the normal format, with the disks and such. I went back to recovery mode (option key), disk utility and i erased my disk. After erasing it for about 10 minutes, it was stuck in one spot so being the biggest idiot in the universe, I held down the power button. Then when i restart my mac and went to the option-key interface thing, the only disk that was showing up is Recovery HD which before it still had iTunes. So now, when i turn on my mac, it automatically goes to recovery mode. I then did some experimenting with the Disk Utility.

I tried erasing my disk again and this time , about 30 minutes later, it completely erased it, which is good but it's still not showing up. I tried partitioning it, and I have no idea what that even means, but it kept on saying, couldn't unmount disk or sumthing like that even though it said "Mount Point:Volume/iTunes"

I kinda gave up on that point and I was planning to just give it to the apple guys and pay the amount that is required to get that stupid mac fixed. But my dad found the installation disk. Yayyyyy, but when i startup my mac with the C button, it opened up the disk interface but it looked really weird. It was like the room of a control freak with a bunch of codes and stuff but the main thing was, this message: "You have to restart your computer. Hold down the power button for a few seconds or click the restart button" and some other languages. I retried reopening it but the same thing shows up.

I tried going back to basics, i tried reinstalling my OS but this time, when it asks me to choose the disk i wanna reinstall it in, the only thing that shows up is Recovery and it's locked.

If you have a solution to this problem, I would be insanely grateful. I would go to your house, hug your whole family, kiss you and everything! (BTW please go easy on me, I'm very stupid, I'm only 14, I'm a confused kid and I would like some nice instructions.) Seriously tell me what to do and I'll do it, unless it involves money, I kinda hope that that's a last resort kinda thing. It's always good to not spend your cash. Anyways, thanks for reading this ... essay Thank you again a billion times.

-Me

Sounds like a pretty typical hard drive failure.
Means it's time to replace the hard drive.
Time to talk to the parents about it - this would not be something you did to it - just the nature of hard drives, they die.

That's what "the hard disk can't be saved" means and not sure why that individual would suggest formatting the drive once verifying the drive had died. So, he may not know what he's talking about.

I would at least take it in to Apple and let them diagnose it properly and make sure it's not something else.
Depending on what Mac it is, replacing the drive can be anything from an easy do it yourself project up to a let Apple do it project.

Thanks for the quick reply, does that mean there's nothing I can do to save it? And if I do go to the Apple store, what will they do? Will they just replace my hard drive or ...? And most importantly, does it need money . Anyways thanks again

Yes, someone will need to pay for a new hard drive if your Mac is not still under warranty.
"Assuming" that's what the problem is. New hard drives can be had for $60-$100.

Tell them it won't boot and ask what's wrong with it.

What Mac do you have, what version of OS X was on it?

If 10.7 or 10.8:
Try booting while holding down the command & 'R' keys
If it boots, open Disk Utility
Select your drive on the left side - top one
Try a Verify and Repair of the drive - what does that say?

it was 10.7 Lion. I tried doing the command R thing but that didn't seem to work. I press them during startup right? And does it matter if I use the right command button cause my left one is broken. When I verify and Repair them, it says that my disk seems to be OK. I wanna ask a question though, I wanna partition my drive but it says "Couldn't unmount disk" what do i do? Thank you.

If booting to the Recovery partition does not work, exactly how did you run the verify and repair?

And what Mac is this?

I hold option key and it lets me choose which disk i wanna start my hard disk but currently I can't choose as the only option is Recovery HD. I can no longer find my normal hard disk. And I'm not sure what your question means but it's a Macbook pro 10.7 OS X Lion. That's all the things I remember

Does anyone else in the house have a Mac running 10.7 or 10.8?

No, just me. My dad does have a mac but he bought that in like 2011 or sumthing, i couldn't possibly be 10.7 and he never did any upgrades to it coz he mainly uses his windows laptop.

Bought in '11, it will have 10.6.8 or 10.7.

Since it will boot to the Recovery HD and reports the drive is ok, would try...

Using his Mac
Open the App Store and log into it with your Apple ID.
Head for purchased area and download 10.7 - do not install it
Then download Lion Diskmaker (google - should be 1st hit) and use it to make a Lion bootdisk/installer on a USB flashdrive. It will need to be 8 GB minimum size. (It'll walk you through it)
Then use that flash drive to boot your machine and see if it will install.

If his Mac does not have the App Store, it'll be some earlier version of 10.6 - run the software update and update his machine.

Of course - All of this after you ask him if you can use his machine.

Hi bob, sorry for the late reply, I've been studying like crazy in the past few weeks. But I did ask my dad for his mac and he lent it to me. He does have an app store but when I search 10.7 or lion, nothing important came up. I'm not sure what I should search for. You said go to the puchased area, where is that? The only thing that pops up is Mountain Lion and is that supposed to be it? Thanks for your guidance bobtomay Thank you so much.

Well, I still don't know what model MBP yours is - so, don't know if 10.8 will install on yours or not.

What year model is it?

Was the copy of 10.7 on your MBP registered to your Apple ID (did you buy it and install it) or did you get this machine used from someone else and it already had 10.7 on it?

May I ask how does the Lion Diskmaker work? Like a list of instructions? First I download it, I unzip it, I put it in my 16 gb USB then what do i do? Thank you

Check out these directions. If you choose to automatically build the disk ignore the sections on manually building the disk.

Video tutorial