Seagate Momentus XT 750 Help please!

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Seagate Momentus XT 750 Help please!

So, after searching amazon for hours I settled on a Seagate Momentus XT 750gb drive to replace the one in my Mid 2009 MBP.

From the guys at the apple store, I learned about lion recovery. My goals are as follows:

1) Fresh install of lion using lion recovery

2) Update to Mountain lion and have fun

So far I've haven't been able to accomplish no. 1. Here is what I have done:

I replaced the hardware (HDD) in the MBP according to all the directions in the user manual. I plug my USB drive in with the Lion Recovery uploaded on it. Then I turn the machine on, while holding the option key for an OPTION boot. I get what appears to be a nice yellow little USB icon that says EFI just beneath it, with an arrow under that. Clicking the arrow causes the MBP to start to do something, only to end up with a circle with a slashthrough eventually resulting in nothing happening (no noises, etc) so the system shuts down, or I just shut it off. Also, the first few tries of OPTION booting, I got a flashing HD icon next to the USB EFI icon.

So, any guidance? I've just poped in my flash drive that is supposed to contain Lion Recovery, but its not showing up in finder. Its rather disconcerting I'm not sure what to do about that, so any suggestions about how to proceed? I have lots of DVDs I can burn if that works...

Thanks for the help!

Posted on Jul 28, 2012 3:35 PM

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Answer 1

Shootist007

Level 6

16,709 points

Jul 28, 2012 3:53 PM in response to Jimmy H.

Well did you use the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant program

Lion Recovery Disk Assistant

To copy the Recovery HD partition onto the USB thumb drive?

You have to do that when you have a hard drive in the system that contains the Lion Recovery HD partition.

Then boot the computer from that USB thumb drive to check to make sure it works properly.

Then switch out the drives in the system and boot the system from that USB drive and reinstall Lion.

But there is another way to do this.

Do you have a SATA to USB adapter or enclosure? If you do you can connect the other drive in that (either drive is doesn't matter), boot the computer from the drive that already has Lion installed on it. Partition and format the Seagate XT drive. Once that is done open the Mac App Store and Buy Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store and let it download. When the download is finished and the install starts at the screen where you select which drive to install to point it to the new Seagate XT as the install location. Once that is done if the seagate drive is the external drive then switch the drive out, if it is still the internal drive then just disconnect the older drive that has Lion on it. Or when the computer reboots after the install is finished migrate your Files, Programs and setting from the drive that has Lion on it to the new Seagate XT drive that has Mountain Lion on it.

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Answer 2

Jimmy H. Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 28, 2012 5:24 PM in response to Shootist007

Coolio! I did indeed use the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant and partitioned a USB thumb drive. OPTION booted to test and it came up, so I clicked it and it wanted to start the install/recovery process as intended!

When it came up, there was 3 options for me to choose from 1: Macintosh HD, 2: Recovery HD, 3: the USB looking one (which is the one I tested) so we know that works!

I'll be swaping out the drives shortly to see if all goes well. I really like the enclosure idea, but I don't have one just yet. Its in the mail tho!

Thanks for all the help, and I'll let you know how it goes!

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