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Hard drive upgrade issue: Unable to locate my hard drive

W

willyeyeam

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 30, 2007
28
0
Hey Folks,

After my macbook hard drive kindly failed on me, I ordered a new Seagate Momentus 5400.5, 320gb hard drive. I popped that sucker in this afternoon and began to start up my macbook with the OS X disc 1. Everything was going smoothly, except that it can't find the hard drive. It is recognized under my disk utility, but when I click to partition it, select options, select GUID, click 'OK', I can neither Name it 'Macintosh HD' or do anything else. I can't proceed with anything because when it asks me to select a HD, the HD does not show up. Again, everything works except that the hard drive is not found.

I pulled the hard drive out. Made sure the screws were alright. Made sure everything was all snuggly, and yet it still won't work.

Any suggestions?

I'm going to bring it to a mac store in town... hopefully they'll know what to do with it.
 
eman said:
Did you format the hard drive in OS X extended journaled, with the disk utility?
Click to expand...


Yes I believe so. In the "DIY" pdf that apple has, I got up to step five. I was not allowed to name the drive (step 6). It was OS X extended (journaled) though. What I mean by not allowed is the option was transparent or non-selectable.

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacBook_13inch_HardDrive_DIY.pdf

See "reinstalling the software that came on your computer"
 
Yes. I clicked GUID partition.

I was unable to name the hard drive.

It was Macintosh OS X Extended (Journaled) etc...
 
willyeyeam said:
Yes. I clicked GUID partition.

I was unable to name the hard drive.

It was Macintosh OS X Extended (Journaled) etc...
Click to expand...

Let me get this straight, you have already formatted the Hard Drive in the HFS+ format which OS X needs to install onto? You have to do that in the disk utility before you can start installing MAC OS X. Also take your old hard drive to the Apple store and if your lucky and find a Genius who isnt a zombie they should know a thing or two about data recovery and be able to get the data back for you that you lost. Theres almost no cirumstance in which your data/programs are lost permanently.
 
cogsinister said:
Take the drive out and then re install it, making sure it is properly plugged in......maybe the drive is not connected correctly.....
Click to expand...

I already tried that. Made sure it was all nice and snuggly. No dice.

kastenbrust said:
Let me get this straight, you have already formatted the Hard Drive in the HFS+ format which OS X needs to install onto? You have to do that in the disk utility before you can start installing MAC OS X. Also take your old hard drive to the Apple store and if your lucky and find a Genius who isnt a zombie they should know a thing or two about data recovery and be able to get the data back for you that you lost. Theres almost no cirumstance in which your data/programs are lost permanently.
Click to expand...

This is what I did... step for step. (note: being aided by an Apple tech rep)

1. Installed the hard drive myself. Took out the battery... blah blah... took the shield off of the dead hard drive... put it on the new one... stuck it in. Done.

2. Turned it on. Inserted Mac OS X Installation Disc 1. Held down "C". Let go of C.

3. Selected a language. Agreed to the license.. etc...

4. Asked to Select a Hard Drive to install the OS on. No hard drive appeared. Told to click on Disk Utility. Go to disk utility. See my 320 GB Seagate Momentus 5400.5 drive on the left hand side, along with the Installation CD. Click on the Drive.

5. Clicked on Partition. Selected GUID partition. Clicked ok.

6. Asked by the Rep to name the hard drive "Macintosh HD". Try to name it, but that option is transparent (or not allowed). It was Macintosh Extended (journaled). The partition volume was on 'Current'. Just unable to name the hard drive. However... when I changed the partition volume to '1 Partition' I was able to name it... I didn't go through and partition it because I didn't think you had to change the volume. I figured 'Current' was supposed to work. Whats the difference between 'Current' and '1 partition'... because... 1 partition should just be = no real partition at all. I mean, I might be wrong but I thought partitioning the drive was to divide it up. If I partition it it would end up being 2 drives. 320/2 = 160 each (give our take the HD discrepancies). ?

Mac tech rep didn't know what else to do. Currently at a poor serviced apple tech store in the area. Paid $60 for them to run a diagnostic. I mean, I've already sent it in for repair... I guess i'm just wondering what the problem could have been... and whether or not I am paying 60 dollars for a repair that I could have done, easily, by myself.
 
cogsinister said:
We paid $50 to find out that my step daughters MB was fried after she spilled a glass of beer in it...........

I think i allready knew to be honest.......$50 down the drain.....
Click to expand...

lol you can still salvage the parts to make your money back, but its a bit random in this tread :p you could have actually saved it if you acted correctly when the beer was poured on.
 
willyeyeam said:
<clip>

6. Asked by the Rep to name the hard drive "Macintosh HD". Try to name it, but that option is transparent (or not allowed). It was Macintosh Extended (journaled). The partition volume was on 'Current'. Just unable to name the hard drive. However... when I changed the partition volume to '1 Partition' I was able to name it... I didn't go through and partition it because I didn't think you had to change the volume. I figured 'Current' was supposed to work. Whats the difference between 'Current' and '1 partition'... because... 1 partition should just be = no real partition at all. I mean, I might be wrong but I thought partitioning the drive was to divide it up. If I partition it it would end up being 2 drives. 320/2 = 160 each (give our take the HD discrepancies). ?
<clip>
Click to expand...

There is really no difference between current on a new drive and "1 Partition" with ONE exception. If the drive is currently formatted as a PC drive (as most brand new drives are) they will be carrying an "MBR" partition map standard (which will work with FAT32 or NTFS PC formats). If you leave the new drive as "Current" the "Options" button at the bottom (where you make the change to GUID or APM depending on what type of Mac the drive is to be used with) is greyed out or non-selectable. If you tell it you want to change the partition (that is, don't use current but rather use 1 partititon in your situation) then the "Options" button will become selectable and you can choose the correct Partition Map Scheme using the window that appears when you click it. The key part is telling the OS that you want to change the low level partition map scheme.

Chances are your particular new drive was formatted as NTFS with a MBR partition map, so natively Macs cannot write to it hence the inability to change the name. As soon as you change it to "1 partition" and change the partition map type and set the "Format:" in Volume Information to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) then the name becomes editable since it is now knows it is going to be a Mac volume after you click "Apply".

Wait one other thought-- were you selecting the drive in the left hand column of Disk Utility or the one partition that existed? To change partition types you need to select the drive itself since the partition map affects the whole drive no matter how many partitions are set up.

And no, you will not wind up with 2 partitions-- a drive has to have at least ONE partition which you will be setting up when you initialize it with the new partition map scheme.

EDIT: Oh well, just saw the part of your post about already having sent it in! Nevermind!
 
i should've waited around and tried that. yes i did select the drive on the left hand side. now they will charge me 60 dollars for a diagnostic.... annoying....

but there is a strange clicking noise (really fastly repeating clicking noise.) i put the new hard drive in and it still seemed to make that problem.

anyone know what that is?
 
Hmmm... not positive about the fast clicking noise, although a repetitive clicking noise is often not a great sound and is often associated with hard drive trouble. The fact that you mentioned fast in the description and that it persisted makes me think of a possible fan problem rather than a drive problem.

There is an interesting site here that has recorded samples of the sounds of many hard drives (both desktop and laptop) with problems that you might want to check out. Each sound sample has some accompanying text describing the sound and possible cause/situation.
 
sickmacdoc said:
Hmmm... not positive about the fast clicking noise, although a repetitive clicking noise is often not a great sound and is often associated with hard drive trouble. The fact that you mentioned fast in the description and that it persisted makes me think of a possible fan problem rather than a drive problem.

There is an interesting site here that has recorded samples of the sounds of many hard drives (both desktop and laptop) with problems that you might want to check out. Each sound sample has some accompanying text describing the sound and possible cause/situation.
Click to expand...

Yeah, It definitely does not sound like any of those. At the mac store, they said the same thing - that it might be a fan issue... BTW, I got my hard drive installed and working. I did the 1 partition and solved it. Got my money back as well.... so thankful for the help. saved a broke college kid 60 dollars.
 
willyeyeam said:
Yeah, It definitely does not sound like any of those. At the mac store, they said the same thing - that it might be a fan issue... BTW, I got my hard drive installed and working. I did the 1 partition and solved it. Got my money back as well.... so thankful for the help. saved a broke college kid 60 dollars.
Click to expand...

Hey, gotta love it when it works out in the end! :D
 
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