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Installing Hard Drive in unibody mac

Acorn

Acorn

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 2, 2009
2,644
358
macrumors
Hey all. I bought a 320 gig WD 7200 rpm hard drive for my Jan 09 unibody mac. However im having trouble installing it. When I start up the mac and hold down the c key to boot from the cd to recover / install OSX it winds up and then the computer restarts. If I put the cd in and do nothing on start it stays blank and shows a file folder.

the catch is im using the cd from my black macbook not the cd it came with. since the original disks are at my parents house. would that make a difference?

it seems like Ive tried everything. I even put it in an external drive formated it for osx and set it as a boot partition. still the same problem.

Is it the cd im using or is there some other issues with installing new hard drives on the unibody Im not aware of.
 
Like floptical stated, you can't use a disc from another computer - Mac OS X discs that come with Mac's are serialized which means they will only work with that specific Mac.
 
wow thats really interesting info thank you guys. its not a big deal I see my parents 4th july weekend and I can get the original disks. At least now I know what I have to do. many thanks.
 
You can put the new HD in your black macbook and use the restore disks. Load OS X, then pull out the new HD out of the blackbook and put it in your unibody macbook. Boot the new computer and all is well.
 
eman said:
You can put the new HD in your black macbook and use the restore disks. Load OS X, then pull out the new HD out of the blackbook and put it in your unibody macbook. Boot the new computer and all is well.
Click to expand...

Nope. Still won't work, as the Blackbook discs won't have the 9400M drivers.

The discs are model specific, and a hard-drive setup with those discs will be too.
 
iLog.Genius said:
But if you do Software Update to 10.5.7, isn't the drivers included? I never looked into this myself so I could be wrong.
Click to expand...

Not sure...?

I figured the updates were pick-and-choose when they installed to keep the system consistent. Maybe not though *shrug*

OP, test it out for us and let us know!! :p :D
 
I would think the system would know what computer your running and what it needs, I doubt the regular older macbooks have all the drivers from the new(or should I say collectors) ones somewhere on their harddrive. It wouldnt make sense and it would make for a pretty loaded machine
 
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