Reformatting mac pro

[shortpballer]

Been trying to do a clean install on my mac pro because its been years.

My SSD broke down around 6 months ago, so I moved everything over to a 2TB backup hard drive and have been running off that for 6 moths.

Finally I purchased an SSD, and it arrived today along with a brand new snow leopard cd.

I put the SSD in and the snow leopard and it wouldn't boot. So I figured it was the SSD. I put back in the 2TB to see if it was recognizing the disk, and it said it needed to be formatted. So I partitioned it for mac. All good, now the disk is recognized.

I tried taking out the other hard drive, leaving just the new SSD, and the snow leopard disk in. Still won't boot.

Put back in the 2TB and asked the computer to restart using the CD as the startup disk.

Now nothing. Now I can't get the computer past a simple apple logo at startup.

Need Help!

Mac 4.1
6-core 3.33
48gb ram

 

[sarthak]

Have you tried a newer version of OS X? Perhaps boot of a USB image of Mavericks or Yosemite and installing that on the SSD instead.

I can't recall if it works on the '09 Nehalems but, if you had a newer version of OS X installed before you should be able to hold CMD+R to boot into recovery mode to download and install a new version of OS X.


Also try a PRAM reset (CMD+P+R) and try holding option and selecting Snow Leopard again to boot off the Install DVD to install it to the SSD.

If you've already installed it to the SSD and it's not booting it could be a bad disc or an older version of Snow Leopard that is incompatible with the SSD (and its firmware).

 

[lowendlinux]

Why not just download 10.9/10.10 from your back up drive and install it on the new SSD?

 

[0879397]

I would suggest that fresh install of a newer OS X version is the best option for you.

 

[OS6-OSX]

I have had an issue like this on my 3,1. Would not boot from the SL DVD, Drive Genius or Techtool Pro 5. Ended up being the video card. The Quadro 4000 needs an OS newer than any on the disks listed. All these disks were fine when the old 8800 gt was in there!

 

[thefredelement]

IIRC someone on this forum had a similar issue once upon a time and it was that the Superdrive had become a little loose.

What happens if you put the CD in and just press the Option button after you hear the chime?

 

[shortpballer]

Thank You all for your help. Figured it out and mac pro is running good again on a fresh install!