new harddrive not being installed to

[Micahchetrit]

I am working on a friend's mac.  She just got a repair shop to put in a new WD Scorpio black 500gb in her macbook 2007 model to replace her dead hd.  They did not install the os after they did that.  She also gave me the install disk for 10.5.4. when I put in the disk, it boots up the install wizard, and after I select the language (English) it says preparing installation and after about 3 seconds it says it cannot be installed on this comp (paraphrasing) and shows a warning triangle with a hd in the lower right.  when I use the *censored* utility I can see and format the hd, but I can't see it anywhere else.  I repeated several times with the same results. I also formatted the hd to the top option, the non case sensitive one with journaling, because that's what the person from apple said to do.  Apple doesn't want to help, and neither does the repair shop that put in the hd.  It also got a new dvd drive, but I don't think that's the issue because it can boot the disk.
Any ideas? Thanks a ton for trying to help!

[Geek-9pm]

Welcome!
Computer Hope is the number one location for free computer help.
The forum will help everyone with all computer questions.

Sadly the repair shop did not do the right thing. They should have verified  the Hard Drive was the issue.  At defective motherboard component can prevent the install of then OS.  That repair shop, if they were trained by Apple, should have caught that. They are in abetter position to do that if the have experience with the Apple Mac Book.
EDIT: I did not mean to say you motherboard is bad. I mean they should have checked it. And if there was some reason the Western Digital drive can not work in the Apple, they should have also found that.

Did you see this Mac s Had Drive setup guide?
http://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/faq-hdd.php

[Micahchetrit]

Thanks for the help,
is there a way to check to see if the mobo is bad without paying a shop to do it? I have no problem getting into the mobo, I just don't know if it requires special tools to test. and I pretty much followed those steps exactly.  and how would I know if the hd is incompatible? it's sata (I think this is it http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136856, but I am not the one that bought it so not 100% without checking model numbers). 
thanks again, it's nice to have useful forums like this one.

[Geek-9pm]

It is a new HDD. So it should not chase damage to a motherboard. You would think. My guess is MAC OS does not recognize.s the Hard Drive ID number.If you have a friend, you can try it is his Mac boot and see what happens. Or, if he has a PC desktop he can pun the SATA connectors and see if the PC can read and identify the drive.
If a PC or another Mac and ID the drive, you may have some damage to the motherboard. In that article I linked, there is the issue of the flat cable  cracking or puling away from the board. Check it out. Most likely cause of failure.

[Geek-9pm]

Here is some additional information.
When new drives are sent out from the factory thy are often marked as MS-DOS types. To be best used in an Apple OX 9 or X, a drive has to be marked as another type for Apple. Otherwise the drive will not be visible in one of the utility programs for Apple.

Sorry I did not catch this earlier. I normally do not work on  Apple  Computers. So this was way in the back of my grain. Here is a deference that provides some detail.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21220

If you are transferring a hard drive that was installed in another computer to a Macintosh and plan to use it only in the Macintosh, you may use Disk Utility to reformat it as something other than MS-DOS (Mac OS Extended, for example). Though the disk will not appear in the Finder prior to initialization, it will still be available to Disk Utility.

If that applies to thou, there is bothering wrong with you Mac and the new drive is OK. Just have to change its type.

Does anybody out there know more about this?

[Micahchetrit]

I tried changing types a bit, and still nothing.  it's really weird...

[Geek-9pm]

Find somebody that has a PC and test the drive on a PC.
A simple rule is this:
If a drive is setup on a PC, a Mac can not always read it. Nor show it.
AND
If a drive is setup on a Mac, a PC can not read it. But can see the drive.

With a PC, the BIOS can tell you the model number and size of almost any drive, even if it is not readable. But if the BIOS can not ID the drive, something bad has happened.

Here is a link to the free software from Western Digital. for PC only.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp
Look around and you should find a diagnostic program.

Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

    File Name: WinDlg_124.zip
    File Size: 901 KB
    Version: v1.24
    Publish Date: 7/2011
    Release Notes: WinDLG_v1_24_Release_Notes.pdf

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=606&sid=3&lang=en

The problem is not really weird.  Just a while ago drives of 128 GB were rare in home computers. The Mac does note show the drive until it has been set  to the Mac format. Even a raw drive is invisible.

Try the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows