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I just purchased a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500 GB and tried and replaced my MBP 2.4 200gb Fujitsu HDD. However when I turn on the laptop and tried installing Leopard, the screen went DIM and cannot see the hard disk. I went back to Seagate and they say should not have this problem and replace a brand new HDD. I tried again and face the same problem. Any advice?

Try this. Put the seagate disk in your mbp. Startup with the leopard cd (holding down the "c" key of course) Now when you get to the installer screen, go to the top menu and select disk utility from the "utilities" menubar. When disk utility loads, see if it can find your Seagate disk. If it does, follow these steps as outlined in the apple knowledge base article found here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1550?viewlocale=en_US

1. Open Disk Utility.
2. Select the disk's icon on the left side of the window, which usually appears with a numerical capacity and is offset slightly to the left of any volume icons. If you see a tab named "Partition" appear, proceed to step 3.
3. Click the Partition tab. (If you only see tabs named First Aid, Erase, RAID, Restore, then you have selected a volume on the disk instead of the disk itself--repeat step 2.)
4. From the Volume Scheme pop-up menu, choose the desired number of partitions (or 1). (choose 1 if you just want the hard drive formatted as one single drive)
5. Click the "Options..." button.
6. Select a new partition scheme:
* Use Apple Partition Map partition scheme if the disk will be used with a PowerPC-based Mac.
* Use GUID partition scheme if the disk will be used with a Intel-based Mac. (you want this one if you have a new unibody macbook pro or intel based cpu)
7. Click OK.
8. Click Apply. This will erase the disk.

Now Leopard should be able to see your disk for installation.
 
Jottle's got the instructions for you - it should work for you.

Another way is to actually clone your original drive to the new drive (I did mine before installing it, it might not matter.) You'll have to be able to connect the drive externally, then just format it with disk utility, choose "Erase" and Mac Extended (journaled) format. After that, just run either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner and make a bootable clone.

It's easier than having to re-install all your apps. As long as you name the cloned drive the exact same name as your original drive, it will pick up where you left off with Time Machine as if it had always been there.

Jottle - I don't notice the idle sound rising and falling in volume like you do. I tried to concentrate and hear what you were talking about, but I really couldn't make it out. And actually, when I was in a quiet room last night, it was hard to notice the WD drive at all because I had an external 3.5" drive connected (my Time Machine backup) and it's noise, which is still fairly quiet, made the WD500 in my MBP seem quieter. Overall, noise is not an issue with the WD500 Scorpio Blue drive for me, which I'm grateful for. Maybe I just got a decent sample, but if they're all like this, they're a lot better than drives used to be in speed, noise, heat, energy consumption... and capacity. :)
 
Jottle's got the instructions for you - it should work for you.

Another way is to actually clone your original drive to the new drive (I did mine before installing it, it might not matter.) You'll have to be able to connect the drive externally, then just format it with disk utility, choose "Erase" and Mac Extended (journaled) format. After that, just run either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner and make a bootable clone.

It's easier than having to re-install all your apps. As long as you name the cloned drive the exact same name as your original drive, it will pick up where you left off with Time Machine as if it had always been there.

Jottle - I don't notice the idle sound rising and falling in volume like you do. I tried to concentrate and hear what you were talking about, but I really couldn't make it out. And actually, when I was in a quiet room last night, it was hard to notice the WD drive at all because I had an external 3.5" drive connected (my Time Machine backup) and it's noise, which is still fairly quiet, made the WD500 in my MBP seem quieter. Overall, noise is not an issue with the WD500 Scorpio Blue drive for me, which I'm grateful for. Maybe I just got a decent sample, but if they're all like this, they're a lot better than drives used to be in speed, noise, heat, energy consumption... and capacity. :)

I agree that all the new drives are much quieter than any 3.5'' ones I've heard. My observations were in a completely quiet room. This is an extreme case, but also the times when one is likely to notice the sound. Thanks for contributing your findings!
 
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