I thought it was just a fluke, but Apple’s OS X 10.5 “Leopard” Installer seems to have a problem. After booting up from the DVD, the installer doesn’t see the HFS+ volume on the computer’s hard disk. It sees the physical disk, but it appears like the volume doesn’t exist (for most people, “Macintosh HD” is missing as a choice). This could be a major issue if a user doesn’t realize and chooses to reformat the hard disk.
As a very early adopter of Leopard (installed 10 minutes after receiving the DVD via FedEx), I was only a bit worried that somehow the installer had munged the HFS+ partition on my Macbook Pro (the only one on the disk, by the way). Before rebooting, I ran Disk Utility from the installer DVD and it only saw the physical disk, not the volume, so I rebooted back into 10.4.10 and whoa, my “Macintosh HD” hard drive was still there.
I would have thought it was a fluke, but in upgrading my iMac G4 this morning, the same thing happened. No hard drive volume visible in the installer. In this case, my external 250GB firewire drive showed up, but no volumes from my 40GB internal HD.
I rebooted the G4 and let it sit on the “Choose a language…” screen while I wrote this post and when I arrived on the “Select a Destination” panel, the installer had found the proper volume.
My theory is that the installer starts some sort of disk verification (which unmounts the volume), but inexplicably allows me to continue through the install process. What gives? Anyone else seen this issue?
#1 by Roger Mexico on October 27th, 2007
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Same problem.
When I open up the disk utlity from the installer boot up it sees the disk but won’t even let me reformat it because it’s “in use”.
#2 by rotophonic on October 28th, 2007
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Yeah. I think the Installer must be checking the disk, but doesn’t tell you that. I think the solution is to boot from the DVD and when you see the “Choose a language” screen, take a break. Leave it there for 10-15 minutes and then try continuing with the installer. My guess is that 10-15 minutes is long enough for the disk check to finish and it will appear there. And don’t reformat your disk, unless you want to lose all your files.
#3 by leopardfan on November 19th, 2007
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I have the same problem. I tried waiting (for 30 mins, i exaggerated) like rotophonic said but it didnt work. Now im using my macbook using my ipod 30gb as my hard drive. I tried installing back the tiger but my Macintosh HD wont appear on the screen. But when i check the disk utility, my 80gb hard drive is still there.But it says not mounted. Can anyone help me on this? My problem again is my 80gb hard dive is like missing and it cant be detected. Thanks.
#4 by rotophonic on November 19th, 2007
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Here’s a link to Apple’s acknowledgement of this issue. When you see the physical disk listed, but not the volume (your “Macintosh HD”), then I believe it is in the process of checking the volume.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306861
They say:
Not sure what status will report, but you might also try doing a “Verify Disk” in Disk Utility in Tiger before trying to install Leopard.
It’s possible that the Leopard found a problem during the disk check that Disk Utility (fsck) cannot fix (meaning that something like Disk Warrior is required to fix it).
If you check it in Tiger, you’ll at least have the feedback from Disk Utility to go on.
#5 by michele on August 7th, 2008
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I have a problem that seems like yours: upgrasding from 10.4 to 10.5 the installer terminate it’s work without error but when the PowerBook Pro reboot, after the gray apple logo appears on the screen, nothing appens …
Booting in ‘verbose mode’ the problem seems to be a failure on Directory Manager.
Can anyone help me !!
#6 by rotophonic on August 8th, 2008
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I’d recommend that you do a Leopard reinstall and choose the “Archive and Install” option, where a completely new system is installed on your disk and the users and network settings get preserved. Try that first and if you’re still having an issue, please write down and post the exact error you’re seeing during the verbose-mode boot.
#7 by michele on August 11th, 2008
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hi, thanks for your help. I find this interesting documentation about my problem.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1543
Unfortunately I discovered this article too late …. I’ve reinstalled the system and now I’m transfering manually all the preferences.
Thank you again