After I replace hard drive?

I have the new hard drive installed and the new memory. Unfortunately, my optical drive has died. It does try but eventually spits the disk out. I will get an external drive today. I still m running Snow Leopard (I think) on this notebook (late 2008-early 2009). It is the 13" white macbook.

I did research and found conflicting "next" steps. I have done nothing to partition anything. Some posts say something about GUID. I really don't know what any of this means. The hard drive came from OWC.

So my question is--Do I just use the original OS disks 1 and 2 (yes I have them) and hold down the "c" key while it boots up? Will the screen tell me everything I am supposed to do?

Then I use the migration assistant to get my stuff back off the external drive.

Thanks. I see it would have been much easier to buy a new computer.

These directions should help . Don't be intimidated by the number of steps. They have really split things into a step-by-step guide.

This video gives a quick overview of the entire process How to Perform a Clean Install of Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 Video

Thanks for the link. I am pretty good at following directions.

Now I am afraid I have one of those macbooks that will only recognize the optical drive installed therein. I saw where I could have gone in and made all these changes to the preferences but now it is too late. But, I just got home with the external drive and will give it a try.

Error Message

External drive worked. Disk utility loaded okay. Language question came up. Then a notice: This software cannot be installed on this computer.

The disks are the ones that came with my iMac bought the same day. I have the macbook ones somewhere I guess. Are they computer specific or something?

nancyspeed said:

The disks are the ones that came with my iMac bought the same day. I have the macbook ones somewhere I guess. Are they computer specific or something?

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Yes they are.

- Nick

Thank you!! I finally found them. Now I see they are labeled Macbook.

I sound like a hoarder but I still have the box the macbook came in just in case. Still have Clarisworks CD and all that other software for my 1975 mac (which I also still have). Gotta throw all that stuff away.

nancyspeed said:

Still have Clarisworks CD and all that other software for my 1975 mac (which I also still have). Gotta throw all that stuff away.

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If you got a 1975 Macintosh computer…DON'T THROW IT AWAY. It's worth a lot of money!!!

- Nick

p.s. First Mac wasn't until 1984.

pigoo3 said:

If you got a 1975 Macintosh computer…DON'T THROW IT AWAY. It's worth a lot of money!!!

- Nick

p.s. First Mac wasn't until 1984.

Click to expand...

Yes a lot of $$$! I wonder if he meant to type 1985? That would probably be a Plus or at least 512.

Hahahaha. I meant 1995. It's worth at least $5.00. Thanks for the chuckle!

All is Well

Since my optical drive died some time during the year (worked fine a year ago) I went to Best Buy to get an external one. Bought the brand new Apple Superdrive. Of course after I got home and looked online I saw that it was not compatible with my old machine. Back to Best Buy and exchanged it for the cheapest LG I found. Got home and it worked just fine.

Got everything reinstalled just fine including Office for Mac 2008 version.

Used migration assistant to transfer from external hard drive. Wish I had done it on installation because it required me to enter another user account. No big deal but I did find how to fix it. But Apple should tell people that on reinstall.

A big southern thank you to everyone who helped me. I have learned more than I ever wanted to but I am glad I did it. I told my sister and she said "You know how long I would have spent on that project? About the time it would have taken me to drive to the Apple Store and tell them to call me when it was fixed." She lives 10 min from the Apple Store.

I appreciate all the volunteers here helping those who need guidance and showing so much patience. If you ever need to know how to feed a baby parrot or train a dog I can help you with that.

I didn't help all that much. But congrats on getting everything working!

- Nick