Lion won't install...thinks new Hard Drive has no space but 500GB free

[SeattleMacUser]

I own multiple macs one of which is a iMac 7.1.

In February I chose to replace the hard drive as it had <1GB remaining in space. A local business specializing in Macs did it for me (Mac Store...for those of you from WA/OR)...worked perfectly and has been running great since.

I downloaded the Lion update but the installer will not even load/start. An error mssg pops up saying >2GB of storage are required. The new HD has about 500GB free...it's as though it thinks the old hard drive is still there ????

Any ideas??

Many thanks for viewing and your thoughts are appreciated.

 

[hiohokaybye]

Hi,

Try going into the disk utility and reformat your drive and make sure its Mac OS Extended Journaled, then try to install it, see if that works.

 

[SeattleMacUser]

Thanks for the response...just double-checked and its already formatted as Extended (journaled)...any other suggestions??

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

I own multiple macs one of which is a iMac 7.1.

In February I chose to replace the hard drive as it had <1GB remaining in space. A local business specializing in Macs did it for me (Mac Store...for those of you from WA/OR)...worked perfectly and has been running great since.

I downloaded the Lion update but the installer will not even load/start. An error mssg pops up saying >2GB of storage are required. The new HD has about 500GB free...it's as though it thinks the old hard drive is still there ????

Any ideas??

Many thanks for viewing and your thoughts are appreciated.

Have you ran a disk repair on the disk in question? Might be worth trying.

 

[8767092]

Boot from the install CD, select Disk Utility, format the disk, and proceed with the install without rebooting.

That should fix the error with the installer.

 

[bbarnes870]

Sometimes just a small change in partition size will also fix that install error. You have to make sure you don't have a non standard boot camp partition or something weird first. But we've had a few customer machines that we've had to go into disk utility and drag the partition size a couple megs smaller then run the installer. Then just go back and drag it back to the bottom to grab the empty space. It's really touchy with the restore partition on upgrades.

 

[eternalife]

This may be a reach but...

Check to see how much space your local Time Machine snapshots are taking. Finder will show the space as available because TM is suppose to manage the snapshots if the space is needed. However, there may be an issue with the installer not seeing the space as free. 500GB sounds like a lot of snapshot space though unless you deal with large files and repeatedly get touched. It's a shot though. See link below for how much snapshot space is being taken.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878