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Leopard install won't recognize WD hard drives

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Parasitic

Diamond Member
So I got my Scorpio blue WD 320GB 5400rpm drive from NE and swapped out the old Fujitsu 160 from my blackbook. It was well until I put in my Leopard 10.5 install disc that came with my Macbook...no volume found. I did the waiting game for 6 hours and nothing. I opened up the terminal and there was no fsck or df processes running in the background. Thankfully I had not erased the old Macbook drive so I booted it up in USB and am just running SuperDuper over it, but does anyone know how to get over this problem?

Yes, I know I know...you're all going to say "well arent you duping the drive so all is well?", but I originally wanted a fresh install so I can recustomize everything from scratch and this obviously isnt what I had in mind 🙁

I also tried the MSIWindOSX86 iso which has 10.5.4 as its core and it still wouldn't do it. The drive is not defective as it checks out fine and is recognized in OSX through external USB disk.
 
You need to run Disk Utility to format the disk and give it HFS+ (new drives are either unformatted or formatted FAT) and a GUID.

Also, you cannot install to an external. I don't think you were here, but just letting you know.
 
Originally posted by: TheStu
You need to run Disk Utility to format the disk and give it HFS+ (new drives are either unformatted or formatted FAT) and a GUID.

Also, you cannot install to an external. I don't think you were here, but just letting you know.
Click to expand...

I formatted the disk to HFS+ with GUID by putting my old hard drive into an USB enclosure, booting OSX off that and running disk utility on the newly installed SATA WD drive. No dice afterwards. The drive is recognized by OSX but once I reboot with the disc it cannot be detected.

System Profiler picked it up, but disk utility and Leopard installer was no dice.
 
Ok, this is silly. SuperDuper finished running so my new hard drive is now bootable and functional, so I restarted Leopard installer in OSX, the computer reboots and installer runs. Guess what, still no drive. There has got to be something wrong with the Leopard installer disc not recognizing my drive at all.

I'm tempted to torrent 10.5.6 and trying that out...
 
Have you done any googling to see if others have reported this problem? I had once heard that if a drive has its own built in sudden motion sensor (which some WD drives do) then it will cause issues with Macs since they have a separate independent accelerometer.

That may be the issue here.

There actually is a way to install OS X to an external drive that I just remembered... it just isn't... how do you say, kosher.

It requires you to ISO your installation disk, then download some hackintosh installation tools. This will let you install it to the external.

Honestly, do some research into this and see whats what. Perhaps even contact WD and see if they have a fix (perhaps a firmware update that disables their SMS)
 
It seems to be a little more common than I thought, but from googlng all but one have explicitly mentioned western digital drives as the culprit. Oh wells, I think I'm just going to have to live with this for now.
 
If you run disk utility from within the installer, does the drive still not show up? I put a Scorpio 320 Black in my MacBook last fall and it was fine. This drive also has the Sudden Motion Sensor so that may not be what's causing your issue.
 
Originally posted by: alevasseur14
If you run disk utility from within the installer, does the drive still not show up? I put a Scorpio 320 Black in my MacBook last fall and it was fine. This drive also has the Sudden Motion Sensor so that may not be what's causing your issue.
Click to expand...

Nope. Some people have speculated that there's a bug in Leopard installer when it runs checks in the background the volume gets unmounted. Sometimes waiting for a bit will help but in my case fsck isn't one of the processes showing up in the background at all when I call up Terminal.
 
Very strange. This is the first I've heard of this sort of problem... I wonder if a separate Scorpio would exhibit the same behavior in your case. You could also try a different, brand new drive if you can get your hands on one. In addition, you could try the Scorpio in a friends MacBook.

I know those two options would be pretty tough though. I really wish I knew another way to help!
 
I don't know if you tried this but. You can use Disk Utility and clone the original hard drive to the new one and swap it that way. Not the best way to do it incase you need to format in the future :-x.
 
Originally posted by: VinylxScratches
I don't know if you tried this but. You can use Disk Utility and clone the original hard drive to the new one and swap it that way. Not the best way to do it incase you need to format in the future :-x.
Click to expand...

I've already gone ahead and SuperDuper'ed the drive so OSX is running on the new drive. It is the future that I'm worried about 🙁
 
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