I have a macbook A1181 model core2 duo3.1.3gb RAM. I lost my old HDD so I bought a new harddrive. Since I lost my old HDD I do not have the option to clone the old drive to the new drive. Mac OS X 10.7 DVD is available.
I tried installing Mac OS X onto the new 320GB HDD by pressing the "option" key. It only showed Mac OS X DVD drive in the startup screen. It did not show the HDD. So I clicked Mac OS X DVD icon. After loading I got the error:
"There was a problem installing Mac OS X. Reinstall again"
Then I selected Disk Utility and formatted my new HDD as OS X Journaled. Afterwards I tried again. I inserted Mac OS X 10.7 DVD into an external DVD drive (Inbuilt DVD drive is faulty). I pressed the power button then held the option(Alt) key. It was the same as before. There was no HDD listed in startup.
How can I install Mac OSX onto my new HDD?
Best Answer
Hard drives or DVDs that do not have a filesystem on them will not show up on startup with the option key held down. So, the HDD won't show up on startup because you don't have Mac OS X installed on it yet.
1) Restart with the the option key held down. If there is a system disk connected to the Mac it will show up on the screen. In this case, the install DVD should show up.
2) Select the install DVD and push the return key.
3) Try to install Mac OS X from the DVD to the HDD by following the installer instructions.
4) If the install fails, your install disk may be damaged. Post your error message back here.