Installed New Hard Drive... Now What?

[kutikayla]

Hi Everyone,
I just installed my new hard drive into my Unibody Macbook Pro Mid 2010 model. I did everything correct and have my Snow Leopard USB drive plugged in. I did the hold option on boot and double clicked on the Snow Leopard drive but now it's been stuck on a no pass screen? (see image)

I'm assuming I need to somehow format this hard drive first but how am I supposed to do that if it won't let me in?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Do you still have your grey RESTORE DVDs?

How to format a new HDD/SSD to install Mac OS X or make a bootable copy onto​

What about booting from the old HDD in an enclosure for 2.5" S-ATA HDDs and cloning the contents of the old HDD to the new HDD via CarbonCopyCloner?

 

[kutikayla]

No I don't have the original discs.
It shouldn't be this hard though? Most the videos i'm seeing once I click on the Snow Leopard drive it should bring me to disk utility? And it's not..

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And with the link you sent me to .. I can't even get into my computer so I can't get to disk utility to format it. So there has to be a different way?

 

[DewGuy1999]

Is the drive in the external (with Snow Leopard) the original drive from your MBP? It's possible that the USB enclosure isn't bootable, some aren't.

 

[kutikayla]

No, I never had an actual disc of snow leopard.. I honestly always used someone else's USB. I tested the one I made today and it booted up on my old hard drive. The computer itself sees it but once I hit enter to go into it so that I can get to utilities it just goes to that screen. It's pretty bothersome since I feel I did everything right as far as instructions go :-/

 

[DewGuy1999]

What if you try just letting it boot, without holding down the Option key, etc. I believe it will search for a bootable drive and when it finds the internal isn't bootable will look for another, eventually finding the USB drive and using it to boot.