Chosen Solution
Old 1TB hard drive went bad so I replaced it with a new 2TB drive from ifixit site. Same manufacturer. Followed repair instructions taking care to note all plug pin locations. After reassembly and booting from SnowLeopard CD, I ran Disk Utilities. The drive appears and is listed as WDC WD20EZRX-00D8PB0 Media. Under the erase tab it says total capacity is 0 bytes and Partition Map says unformatted. It’s a new drive and needs to be formatted, fine. But the Erase button, Format menu, and Name field are all dimmed. Nothing in Disk Utils will get that Erase button dark. So I disassembled and unplugged/replugged all connections, rebooted from CD, tried Disk Utility again, but there was no change. Is this a bad drive?
See if this writeup helps you in prepping your HD The Master Guide to Formatting a Hard Drive. As you don’t have anything on your disk Erase is not an active option. First partition the drive with one or more partitions. I like two one for my OS & Apps and the second for my data that way I only back up second data partition every day and backup my first partition when I update or add in any new apps. You might want to leave some space if you plan to use BotCamp with MS Windows or think you might use another OS. Apple by default setup the system with one partition. Then you can format the partition/s as needed.
I’ve had the exact same issue with my WD hard drive in me 21-inch iMac. Everything greyed out in disk utilities no matter what I do. It seems the problem is some kind of thermal sensor kit that OWC provides. 2009-2010 iMacs all seem to require it for third-party drives. Sigh. I am going to call them and ask them if not using this kit will result in the problem we are having.
