LeoV

Hmmmm...not sure what I could test it with. Like I said,it's just the Samsung PZA064 SSD (same model that shipped with some Macbook Airs). It's an SSD so I don't think it has any mechanical problems. I don't think the regular samsung HDD tool is meant for it or the SSD Magician program. Already wiped it with gparted and diskpart several times. Windows 7 runs on it fine (as did XP before it), including after just imaging it back on after the failed OS X install attempts.

Still no luck. Gparted makes a GPT and formats as HFS+, but installer doesn't see it an available partition. Tried erasing and/or creating a new single partition with Disk Utility. Freezes on launch or after applying "partitioning" in erase mode or "creating partition map" under the create window. Are there BIOS options I need to have set? Do I need to disable multicores or virtualization?

Same problem, disk utility just sit there when applying the erase or partition changes. Is there another way to prep an install partition?

Booting off the usb pen image, using disk utility, I can't seem to create a GPT partition. It sits on "creating partition map" (I've waited it out without seeing any progress). If I skip this and just try to advance the OS setup, it sits on "examining drives"... Laptop is a D430 running BIOS A09 (I also tried the custom BIOS, same result). Hard Drive is a Samsung PZA064 SSD... Any known issues with this for the OSX install? Thanks in advance for any advice and help!