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Install Snow Leopard on new HD without using DVD drive

J

jessicuh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 11, 2012
4
0
Hello,

For Christmas, my brother asked me to fix his black MacBook. He had taken to the Apple store and they said he needed a new hard drive. I bought a new hard drive, formatted it and installed with no issues.

I also bought the Snow Leopard install DVD and began installation. The first time I tried, the install got hung up overnight with 14 minutes left to go. So, I shut down the computer and tried again. This time the MacBook repeatedly spit out the DVD.

I used a can of compressed air and shot a few bursts into the drive in case it was dirty. And got the DVD to run again. This time is got hung up with 20 minutes to go. So, did the same thing. Shut down, some air and now the DVD keeps getting spit out over and over again.

I've read a lot about using an external drive, whether that is a DVD drive (like the MacBook Air SuperDrive) or a USB/Firewire drive. However, since there is ZERO OS on this HD now, how can I get either of those to work because I can't get into Disk Utility?

Anyone have any ideas how I can install the OS on this new drive without using the internal DVD drive?

Thanks much!
 
justperry

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,557
9,750
I'm a rolling stone.
jessicuh said:
Hello,

For Christmas, my brother asked me to fix his black MacBook. He had taken to the Apple store and they said he needed a new hard drive. I bought a new hard drive, formatted it and installed with no issues.

I also bought the Snow Leopard install DVD and began installation. The first time I tried, the install got hung up overnight with 14 minutes left to go. So, I shut down the computer and tried again. This time the MacBook repeatedly spit out the DVD.

I used a can of compressed air and shot a few bursts into the drive in case it was dirty. And got the DVD to run again. This time is got hung up with 20 minutes to go. So, did the same thing. Shut down, some air and now the DVD keeps getting spit out over and over again.

I've read a lot about using an external drive, whether that is a DVD drive (like the MacBook Air SuperDrive) or a USB/Firewire drive. However, since there is ZERO OS on this HD now, how can I get either of those to work because I can't get into Disk Utility?

Anyone have any ideas how I can install the OS on this new drive without using the internal DVD drive?

Thanks much!
Click to expand...

First make sure the HDD is correctly formated, it should be GUID, you can open Disk Utility, click on the internal HD and on the bottom it will tell you if it's GUID.

Always say from which year/model the hardware is, now you say you have a MBP, you can connect with a firewire, start the Black Macbook up in Target Disk Mode and Install the OS onto that disk.
Slight chance this might not work, if yours is a new MBP it might not work, but I think it will since the installer should be able to launch even though your MBP could not run SL.

Now a note and cleaning the Optical drive, it was working, otherwise it would not even get into the installer, I recommend you to not clean with compressed air, you can damage the internals, the mechanical parts are very sensitive.
Not only this but if you use compressed air from a compressor you could potentially damage electronics due to static electricity, compressed air in a can is normally OK but only after you equalized the can with the macbook's ground.
 
Macman45

Macman45

macrumors G5
Jul 29, 2011
13,197
135
Somewhere Back In The Long Ago
I may be wrong, but I think you need the original machine specific DVD copy of Sl...The one that came with the machine...Apple will supply this for you, but that doesn't help with the install...Target disk mode or using a shared DVD drive from another Mac would seem your best option here.
 
S

soapsudz

macrumors member
May 14, 2011
49
0
If you have another working Mac with a DVD drive and a spare USB stick or external hard drive, you could copy the DVD and install from that copy. I keep an old 60GB external drive around as an installer. It's much faster than using the DVD.

Run Disk Utility, make a backup image of the DVD, then restore it to your USB stick/external hard drive. Then power up the target machine with the USB drive attached, press Option to choose the boot partition. The installer should then run and you can do a fresh install on to the new hard drive in the Macbook.
 
J

jessicuh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 11, 2012
4
0
soapsudz said:
If you have another working Mac with a DVD drive and a spare USB stick or external hard drive, you could copy the DVD and install from that copy. I keep an old 60GB external drive around as an installer. It's much faster than using the DVD.

Run Disk Utility, make a backup image of the DVD, then restore it to your USB stick/external hard drive. Then power up the target machine with the USB drive attached, press Option to choose the boot partition. The installer should then run and you can do a fresh install on to the new hard drive in the Macbook.
Click to expand...

Thank you. I restored to a USB drive this morning. How do I let the system know to use that drive to install? When I start the computer with the usb drive plugged in nothing happens...
 
justperry

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,557
9,750
I'm a rolling stone.
jessicuh said:
Thank you. I restored to a USB drive this morning. How do I let the system know to use that drive to install? When I start the computer with the usb drive plugged in nothing happens...
Click to expand...

Hold the Option key at start up, a screen will show up with the USB stick, click on that, click enter, and it boots from it.
 
J

jessicuh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 11, 2012
4
0
Holding the Option Key just results in a blank screen - no icons to choose from. I held down the key for quite awhile...
 
justperry

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,557
9,750
I'm a rolling stone.
jessicuh said:
Holding the Option Key just results in a blank screen - no icons to choose from. I held down the key for quite awhile...
Click to expand...

That's not good!

Seems something else is wrong, I wanted to suggest Apple Hardware test but this is not an option now.
I hope for you there is no hardware failure

There are two things you can do now, get the hard disk out and put it in an external case, connect it to the MacBookPro and install from there, then drop it in the Macbook and boot from it.

Or what I and another poster said, connect the macbook to your MacBookPro, then start up the macbook in Target Disk mode and install the OS from your MacBookPro onto the macbook's internal disk.
 
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