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Mid 2012 model, A1278 / 2.5 GHz i5 or 2.9 GHz i7 processor.

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1 tb seagate sd hybrid install went well; formatting not so much

My hard drive died. It was very dead. Went to the genus bar to have it diagnosed and they confirmed the bad news. But i have a time machine backup, so we're all good. Just need a new hard drive. so I bought a new one (1 TB seagate ssd hybrid) and managed to install it with not much fuss. really good guides on ifixit. but the probelm i'm running into now is the formatting process. I can't seem to get the formatting to take through the disk utility- i've tried partitioning it to the GUID setting so it can be mac bootable, but that doesn't seem to work- and going straight to the formatting of the disk just runs forever on the partitioning portion. I am new at this, but it appears i need to get this problem sorted before I can restore my data from the Time Machine. Most of the guides i've seen involve formatting before installation and then transferring data from an existing hard drive to the new one. My old one is dead so i'm just using the backup in the time machine. does this still require a formatting step before installation? It seems like it should work the way i'm doing it, but i'm obviously screwing something up. If any has any advice i'm happy to hear it, if there is anything else i can tell you i'm happy to supply it.

thanks,

Travis

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Let's get some background first. What drive are you booting from to run Disk Utility? What's the operating system on that boot drive, and how is the drive connected to the computer?

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sorry adlerpe and Dan -- should have started with this-

My time machine is being accessed by WiFi, and I'm booting the laptop by holding down option on startup and then i find a network and proceed to disk utility from there- the option boot screen gives me four options once i find a network : time machine backup, reinstall OS X, get help online, and disk utility. the drive i've got in the laptop is the new drive, and its' formatted for PC (Master Boot Disk) - not GUID. trying to format from in the laptop is not working, so i went to pick up a hard drive enclosure to format from another computer. The formatting seems to be fine, making a bootable guid hard drive while plugged into desktop i've got. but when i install the new drive back into the laptop, a) time machine is not able to find it --> probably because b) it still reads the disk as a PC formatted disk.

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i have no idea why this is, i've formatted the new hard drive by plugging it into the desktop three or four times now, and once i even did the entire wi-fi time machine import into the hard drive in the enclosure. and it went fine- i was able see the file structure from my restored information while the new hard drive was plugged into the desktop via the enclosure, but once i put the now reformatted + time machined hard drive back into the laptop, it will not start on it's own (blinking folder with question mark) and in disk utility, it still reads as PC formatted, so i'm a bit out of ideas. iFixit is sending me a new drive, but do any of these symptoms ring a bell for anyone? I'm not sure how this is supposed to work, but it seems like there are problems occuring that lie outside of my experience. Thanks so much for your responses, hopefully this new info rings a bell?

thanks,

Travis

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You'll need to find a friend with a Mac. A Windows PC can't prep the drive properly.

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Sounds like your TimeMachine backup drive is not setup to be a bootable disk.

See if you can catch up with a friend who has a Mac. You'll need a 16 GB or bigger USB flash drive in hand.

Delete the FAT32 partition on the drive and do a fresh format with a GUID partition map & Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition using Disk Utility from your friends Mac.

Then if he doesn't already have it download from the Apps Store the OS installer (make a copy before you use it), Run it to prep up your thumb drive so its a bootable drive.

You can check it out by restarting your friends Mac and holding the Option key to get to the startup manager select your Thumb drive and let the system boot up. If all goes well you should be running from the Thumb drive.

Now copy off the copy of the OS installer onto your Thumb drive. Now shutdown your friends system.

Plug in the USB thumb drive into your system now. Basically, you're going to repeat the process onto your new drive. Run Disk Utility from the Thumb drive and then prep up the drive.

Once the drive is prep'ed don't exit the installer it will ask you if you have a TimeMachine backup to restore onto your drive. Using a different USB/Thunderbolt port connect your backup drive in and select it. Give it some time, when done you should be all set!

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