Help! My external HD became my Macintosh HD on mbp

[yadayada]

Please help! it's urgent.

I was going to clean install my tiger to snow leopard and erased my original Macintosh HD harddrive while doing it. But, the install failed, so now my external hard drive that I had in the USB drive is now my new macbookpro harddrive.

So, if I take out my external hard drive, my macbook pro just has an image of a folder and a question mark inside it.

Please help me how I can get back a hard drive on my macbook pro and make my external hard drive..my external hard drive.

 

[NZed]

try booting from Snow Leopard DVD again and before clicking next in the installation part, go to Disk Utility
Try right clicking your External HD's name and see if its Ejectable
if it is,

click on the Internal HD and format it into Mac OS Extended(Journaled) and try the installation again

 

[yadayada]

Hm, the update doesn't work at all.

Well, what I want to do is not install to snow leopard, but get back my external hard drive. Right now, it is acting as my MacBook Pro's hard drive with all my files in it. So, if i take out my hard drive my MacBook Pro is not workable.

Is that what target disk is? I have no clue what to do right now.

 

[NZed]

Hm, the update doesn't work at all.

Well, what I want to do is not install to snow leopard, but get back my external hard drive. Right now, it is acting as my MacBook Pro's hard drive with all my files in it. So, if i take out my hard drive my MacBook Pro is not workable.

Is that what target disk is? I have no clue what to do right now.

Your Os right now is Tiger right?
so do you have the original tiger disk?

if you do

i would recommend you to install CarbonCopyCleaner or SuperDuper
then do a back up with it(time machine backup too if possible)

then reinstall Tiger

and NO this is not the target disk mode
the target disk mode is when you connect your mac to another mac(or pc) via FireWire

 

[bluespaceoddity]

Hm, the update doesn't work at all.

Well, what I want to do is not install to snow leopard, but get back my external hard drive. Right now, it is acting as my MacBook Pro's hard drive with all my files in it. So, if i take out my hard drive my MacBook Pro is not workable.

Is that what target disk is? I have no clue what to do right now.

In the OP you said you erased the internal hard drive of your MacBook Pro (MBP) as part of a failed upgrade.

That means there is no System on that drive to work with or start up from so you are correct that the internal hard drive in your MBP is not workable. It has no start up volume of its own. Right now the start up volume is on your external drive.

If the installation failed there may be something wrong with the internal Hard Disk or the Mac OS installation disk you used.

I would:
- Insert a Mac OS X installation DVD in your MBP. (An installation DVD of a version that you know works.)
- Shut down the MBP.
- Disconnect the External USB drive and all other peripherals.
- Start the MBP from the Mac OS Installation Disk.
- Don't go into the Installation but open "Disk Utility" from the "Utilities" menu in the Menu Bar at the top of the screen.
- Run the "Repair Disk" routine in Disk Utility (First Aid) until it says the disk appears to be OK.
- I would Erase the internal Hard Disk of your MBP and reformat that drive anyway to remove traces of the failed Installation.

Quit Disk Utility

You can then:
Install a new OS from scratch. Restart and update to the latest version - then copy/paste/ drag your files back over from your External drive to your internal drive.
or
you can shut down the MBP re-attach the External Drive - restart from it and then clone your External drive to your internal drive (Using Disk Utility > Restore (or CCC / Super Duper))

... but until you do an installation of an Operating System there is nothing on the internal hard disk itself that you can use to start that MBP if the info about erasing the drive you mentioned in the OP is accurate.