Can't create partition on new hard drive to install osx

When I go into disk utility and try to create a partition this message pops us:

Partition failed

POSIX reports: the operation couldn't be completed. Cannot allocate memory

I went to my campuses genius bar type service and they said that there is a know malfunction of some hard drive part in this MacBook pro model and that could what I need to fix. I got a seagate momentus 7200 750 gb 7200 rpm Sata 3 gb 16 mb cache 2.5 inches, this is the second one I got delivered to me (I exchanged the first because I thought it didn't work) so now I know it's not the hard drive that's the issue

What could be wrong?