Why won't my macbook recognise my new internal hard drive? - Page 2

Brooklyn567 · Jan 11, 2013, 11:14 PM

To make a long story short.......

The new harddrive was physically thinner than the old one and that caused the SATA connections to miss. If you don't feel or hear it click when you slide it in then it's a miss..
My fix was with double sided tape.
I ran a strip from one end to the other, sticky side on the labeled side of the harddrive but left the plastic on the exposed side so as not to stick to the bay itself.
You will need to thicken the drive by about one quarter of an inch.
If you only have the thin double sided tape you will need to stack it.

The tape will cause some drag when you reinsert the drive, just move slowly, you may have to wiggle or push down on the drive to start it.

Also make sure you didn't mount the harddrive upside down on the caddy.

Feel for the click, no click equals no joy......

Brooklyn baby!

bozac698 · Feb 6, 2013, 01:22 PM

Well I have a mid 2010 17" mac book pro. Bought a WD Scorpio Black 750gb 7200RPm sata drive and ran into the issue upon doing a new install with Snow Leopard, having it hang at the gray apple logo screen and not moving forward with the install.

Took it out put the old drive back in, placed the new drive in a external case and formatted it extended / journaled. (If I recall correctly) Put the new drive back and tried again and got the same hang up, no install.

So what not able to run a 750GB 7200RPM drive?? Most of what I was able to find on forums and apple and so on has given me nothing solid to work with.

I even checked my firmware for the drive controller to make sure I had the most up to date one and I do.

Grrr The current drive is on the way out and I'm frustrated to no end right now.

I looked up my serial number on apple and it mentioned the specs for my system which states...500GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive; optional 500GB 7200-rpm hard drive, or 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB solid-state drive6
...So do I try a 500GB 7200RPM drive??

..."sigh" not sure what else to do and I dont want to keep spending money on drives to find one that works...

Brooklyn567 · Feb 6, 2013, 01:53 PM

Are you sure the drive actually connected internally. Can you hear the drive spinning? It is not necessary for the drive to be preformatted , you can do that with your OS cd in the utilities section. But if your Mac doesnt even see the drive, then it may not be actually physically connected or the controller may be bad. Does your system see the old drive ok? First let us know if the new drive is actually spinning inside your MacBook.

----------

Britguy9 · May 1, 2013, 07:07 AM

So I had the same problem, with my new internal hard drive not being recognised. To fix it I simply booted up my Mac with the external hard drive I was using as the back up, then opened 'Disk Utility', erased the new disk and boom, it appeared on the desktop. After cloning, I restarted and booted the Mac with the new drive and it worked perfectly. Hope this helps someone!

paieye · May 9, 2013, 08:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by THRochester

Hi Finntastic, I have the same problem on my PowerBook 12". Installer doesn't recognise the hard drive which is brand new. Thank you for your help on the forum but I can't see how I can connect the HDD to the PC to reformat it first

Does this require specialist knowledge?
I'm about to give up all hope... Thanks

My wife's 13" MacBook (Snow Leopard) failed to boot from the hard drive, so I booted from the external Snow Leopard disc, and ran Disk Utility. That informed me that the hard disc was corrupt. I have today bought a new hard disc drive, SATA 2.5, and installed it carefully, following the online instructions that one can find on YouTube and elsewhere.

However, Disk Utility does not seem able to find the new drive, and recognises only the OSX Installation-disc.

Is there some simple way of resolving this, or must I take the MacBook to a technician ?

CarolineNH · May 15, 2013, 05:35 AM

I ran into this just yesterday. Installed the new hard drive only to find out that the system didn't see it at all! What I ended up doing (took all day - long and involved, this is the short version!) - used the Install disk to get to the Disk Utility; used the Disk Utility to erase the new hard drive once it was installed (WD Scorpio Blue, 1 TB, 5400 rpm). My husband said that it either had no format on it at all, or was formatted for Windows, so the Mac couldn't see it.

Tried to run the full backup and couldn't get it going. I was able to install the OS from the install disk, but then it didn't want to run the restore from disk utility because it said the OS on the hard drive was older than the OS on the restore disk. Did all my OS installs/ updates/ upgrades, then managed to do a full restore from the backup.

Jan 11, 2013, 11:14 PM	#26
Brooklyn567 macrumors newbie Join Date: Jan 2013	New internal harddrive not recognized ( My Fix ) To make a long story short....... The new harddrive was physically thinner than the old one and that caused the SATA connections to miss. If you don't feel or hear it click when you slide it in then it's a miss.. My fix was with double sided tape. I ran a strip from one end to the other, sticky side on the labeled side of the harddrive but left the plastic on the exposed side so as not to stick to the bay itself. You will need to thicken the drive by about one quarter of an inch. If you only have the thin double sided tape you will need to stack it. The tape will cause some drag when you reinsert the drive, just move slowly, you may have to wiggle or push down on the drive to start it. Also make sure you didn't mount the harddrive upside down on the caddy. Feel for the click, no click equals no joy...... Brooklyn baby!
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Feb 6, 2013, 01:22 PM	#27
bozac698 macrumors newbie Join Date: Feb 2013	Well I have a mid 2010 17" mac book pro. Bought a WD Scorpio Black 750gb 7200RPm sata drive and ran into the issue upon doing a new install with Snow Leopard, having it hang at the gray apple logo screen and not moving forward with the install. Took it out put the old drive back in, placed the new drive in a external case and formatted it extended / journaled. (If I recall correctly) Put the new drive back and tried again and got the same hang up, no install. So what not able to run a 750GB 7200RPM drive?? Most of what I was able to find on forums and apple and so on has given me nothing solid to work with. I even checked my firmware for the drive controller to make sure I had the most up to date one and I do. Grrr The current drive is on the way out and I'm frustrated to no end right now. I looked up my serial number on apple and it mentioned the specs for my system which states...500GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive; optional 500GB 7200-rpm hard drive, or 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB solid-state drive6 ...So do I try a 500GB 7200RPM drive?? ..."sigh" not sure what else to do and I dont want to keep spending money on drives to find one that works...
	0

Feb 6, 2013, 01:53 PM	#28
Brooklyn567 macrumors newbie Join Date: Jan 2013	Are you sure the drive actually connected internally. Can you hear the drive spinning? It is not necessary for the drive to be preformatted , you can do that with your OS cd in the utilities section. But if your Mac doesnt even see the drive, then it may not be actually physically connected or the controller may be bad. Does your system see the old drive ok? First let us know if the new drive is actually spinning inside your MacBook. ----------
	0

May 1, 2013, 07:07 AM	#29
Britguy9 macrumors newbie Join Date: May 2013	So I had the same problem, with my new internal hard drive not being recognised. To fix it I simply booted up my Mac with the external hard drive I was using as the back up, then opened 'Disk Utility', erased the new disk and boom, it appeared on the desktop. After cloning, I restarted and booted the Mac with the new drive and it worked perfectly. Hope this helps someone!
	0

May 15, 2013, 05:35 AM	#31
CarolineNH macrumors newbie Join Date: May 2013 Location: New Hampshire	I ran into this just yesterday. Installed the new hard drive only to find out that the system didn't see it at all! What I ended up doing (took all day - long and involved, this is the short version!) - used the Install disk to get to the Disk Utility; used the Disk Utility to erase the new hard drive once it was installed (WD Scorpio Blue, 1 TB, 5400 rpm). My husband said that it either had no format on it at all, or was formatted for Windows, so the Mac couldn't see it. Tried to run the full backup and couldn't get it going. I was able to install the OS from the install disk, but then it didn't want to run the restore from disk utility because it said the OS on the hard drive was older than the OS on the restore disk. Did all my OS installs/ updates/ upgrades, then managed to do a full restore from the backup.
	0