OS X Installation on 2006 MacBook without Recovery Discs

[dc213]

The hard drive on friend's 2006 MacBook recently failed and needs to be replaced. Unfortunately he no longer has the recovery discs that shipped with it and he never created a backup (I know...he's an idiot). He's ordered a new internal drive which I'm going to install. My question is, how can I install OS X onto the new hard drive without the recovery disc that shipped with his MacBook? Can I use the recovery disc that came with my Mac? Can I use my Snow Leopard disc to do a clean install?

Thanks in advance.

 

[GGJstudios]

My question is, how can I install OS X onto the new hard drive without the recovery disc that shipped with his MacBook? Can I use the recovery disc that came with my Mac? Can I use my Snow Leopard disc to do a clean install?

The grey recovery disks that ship with Macs are model-specific and will not work on other models. You can either call Apple to order replacement disks, or use a retail disk.

 

[MagicBoy]

Can I use the recovery disc that came with my Mac?

No. They are model specific. You'll get a "Cannot be installed on this machine" message if you try and use it.

Can I use my Snow Leopard disc to do a clean install?

Assuming :
1) it's retail and
2) the MacBook has at least 1GB of RAM then yes.

It would however not be legitimate as the machine would not be licensed. I would suggest your friend purchases a retail copy of Snow Leopard.

 

[minifridge1138]

You can use a snow leopard disk.

Unless you have the same make/model MacBook your restore disk won't work.