western digital internal hardrive is not recognised

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Hi there,
I have tried to replace my old hitachi internal harddrive in a mid2010 macbookpro 13inches with a westerndigital internal harddrive designed for osx lion.
Unfortunately, this is not recognised once i insert it in.
Has anybody had this type of problem? How did u sort it out?
Alternatively, what other internal hard disk would u advice?
Wd claims it s apple's fault as they are required to provide the right drivers with the software updates.
Unfortunately, apple does not believe so.
The hardrive is not faulty as i have been using as an external harddrive so far.
Your help would be really appreciated. Many thanks in advance. Luigi
 

dtravis7


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Can you explain a bit farther?

Did you for sure put in the drive the correct way?

A new drive is not going to show anywhere but Disk Utility till it''s set up for OSX. Have you opened Disk Utility and checked to see if the new WD shows up? If it does you erase or Partition it using Apples format.

Let us know so we can farther help. There is no BIOS on a Mac so it's not just going to show anywhere but in DU.

PS, there are no drivers needed.
 
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Hi and welcome to the forums.

What you need to do with is first make sure its inserted properly and is seated all the way.
Really thats is, but you would have had to Format the Drive as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) or no matter what you do, the HD WONT be recognised by the Mac. If you had it as a Ext HD before, you need to put it back in the Ext Enclosure and Format it with Disk Utility as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) and once thats done, try putting it back in the HD Bay.

You really didn't give us much else to go on, but in future, tell us what sort of HD it is, apart from just a Western Digital.
As for other Drives, goto Crucial and OWC and have a look for other drives. Anything they have there will be good for your Mac, as they are tested for Macs, especially OWC.

When at OWC, use the My OWC and it takes you through steps, getting your Mac Specs and it will show you what Hwill be good for your Mac.
I put a 256 GB OWC Mercury Pro 6G SSD into my MBP 13" and haven't missed a beat.
 
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Hi there Guys
Many thanks for your prompt support, greetings, and advices for other HDs.

I made sure to insert the hardrive in the correct way - and tried numerous times. At all the times the hardisk would not in fact be recognised resulting in the display of the flashing questionmark folder. This kept happening even after I tried to erase and format the HD to os journal, while i had this connected as external in an enclosure. Erasing and formatting the HD in such a way was the only possibility. In fact, conversely, when i inserted it in the mac and boot with the installation disk, the diskutility did not even show it.
I had not used the wd as an external before. I bought it brand new and tried to do what i have just explained.
The hd case indicates that this product is suitable for Mac OSX lion. it is a 320GB with 5400rpm, 8MB cache, and a SATA 3gb/s connection. its commercial name is Mainstream classique.

Please, for any other detail do not hesitate to ask.
Greatly appreciated
Luigi
 
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So if you boot your Mac as normal.

Then connect the new hard drive as an external

1. can you see the drive in disk utility? Assuming you can, format it to Mac OSX journaled
2. Does the drive format without error and mount in OSX?
3. If it does can you copy files to and from it?
 
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Basically what I have done, like you advised, I mounted the HD on an external enclosure, boot up the mac with the installation disk, and after I could see the HD with DIskUtility; so, I erased it and format it. Afterward i have installed snowleopard on it successfully (still as an external) and i could boot the mac from this. Snowleopard worked without problems and I even moved on the most recent backup. After this step, I also upgraded the software to lion, and once again I tried to insert the HD inside the mac so to try another boot up. Still, it could not be recognised showing the flashing questionmark folder. After this step, I gave up and for the past month I have been using my mac by booting through the WD in the external case.. .
 
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Can you maybe installed the drive in your Mac and post a couple of pictures of it? Maybe before you install it, bay empty and with it installed?
 
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Thank you for asking. I will do so. Will take some time. but i'll upload the pics as soon as i can. .
 

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Thank you for asking. I will do so. Will take some time. but i'll upload the pics as soon as i can. .


Cool on Pics.

If you put the original drive back inside the MBP, does it boot and show in DU?
 
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gonna take soon the pics. . regarding your question, dTravis: yes. If i put in the original that is shown in DU. . .
 

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gonna take soon the pics. . regarding your question, dTravis: yes. If i put in the original that is shown in DU. . .

Reason I was asking it to be sure the SATA cable did not get damaged when you took out the old drive. If it works then not an issue.
 

dtravis7


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Well it looks normal and pretty full proof.

BTW I have the same WD 320GB Caviar Blue drive I installed in my late 2007 Macbook. Even the drives Model number is the same and I replaced the original Hitachi 80GB.
 
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i can only think of either the drive or the cable for now. .in fact, an interesting fact is that the old drive is recognisable and the cable can read it, whenever i boot with the external WD (as u can see from the snapshot of my desktop - the icon named macintosh HD is the old one - and i can access to it). . however, whenever i try to boot from this old one the system does not start up. . .

may be more the cable the culprit?

Screen Shot 2014-06-16 at 17.13.20.png
 

dtravis7


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That could very well be the issue. Many here on the forums have changed drives and the SATA cable messed up.
 
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Any place you would suggest to buy a cable from, by any chance? . .Thank you Dennis
 

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