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Installed new Hard Drive... now i got a problem.

S

Santiago7

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 6, 2010
8
0
so i have a unibody macbook pro that came with a 250GB hard drive and 2GB memory.

Went to OWC's website and bought a seagate 500GB 7200RPM hard drive and an OWC 4GB memory pack.

Installed them.

when i turned on the laptop i heard the chime and then got a folder with a question mark?

do i have to do something after the install?

could it be a defective hard drive?

thanks.
 
Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9630/5.0.0.732 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Did you reinstall the operating system or restore an image of the old disk back to the new one??
 
Boot from your OS DVD, run disk utility, check disk.
You do know the OS doesn't come installed on your new drive? You have to install the OS.
 
i didnt know that.

what if i don't have the os disk?

can i go out and buy the $40 leopard software to install?
 
Macs are great... but they don't auto-install/backup/restore themselves onto whatever hard drive you purchase.

I would throw your old drive back in. use timemachine on a separate drive and then restore it back on the new one.
 
Don't you have the gray system DVD's that came with your computer? If not you can either buy a retail copy of SL or purchase an enclosure fore your old drive, boot from it, and use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone your old drive onto the new.
 
I would recommend you go buy a copy of Snow Leopard so you own a legal copy but you can put the old drive back in, put the new drive in an external USB case, download Carbon Copy Cloner and then partition/erase the drive (with Disk Utility) and clone (with CCC) the old drive to the new one, then replace again. This would put all your programs, files, etc. back on the new drive as well. If you take this route, set your boot drive in System Preferences/Startup Drive to shorten boot time after reinstalling the new, cloned drive.
 
Eidorian said:
I'd just clone from your original hard drive to the new one. A USB 2.0 2.5" SATA enclosure is pocket change.
Click to expand...
This is the easist way. Buy the enclosure, install the original HD in it and connect it to the computer, by USB I assume. Boot up the computer and immediately hold down the option key. You should be able to see the USB disk and select it. After the machine boots up, use Disk Utility (in the Applications/Utilities folder to Partition the new HD to one partition, and then use (download) Carbon Copy Cloner and to clone the old drive to the new one.
Run Disk Utility' Repair Disk function on the new HD to check it and then reboot.
Should get you up and running. You really should consider buying a copy of Snow Leopard, the updates are free from Apple.
 
I don't mean to be rude, but this thread is funny!

I'm rather floored that someone could forget to install an OS after going through all the trouble of installing hardware...

Anyways, it is probably easiest and, most future proof, to just buy a copy of the Snow Leopard if the OP has lost or misplaced his installation discs.
 
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