Chosen Solution
MacBook Pro 17" 2.33 ghz (early 2007). Received the following errors: Invalid node structure.The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely.Volume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for volume as required.Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk, reformat and restore. I reformatted and tried restoring Lion via TimeMachine. But I kept getting Installation failed, Mac OS X could not be installed on your computer, The installer could not validate the contents of the “base system”. Next I tried erasing and reinstalling from my OS X disks (Tiger 10.5) without success. Next I tried installing a new HD, 3 to be exact (500 gb 7200 rpm). The drives load, I formatted them Mac Extended (journaled) GUID partition / S.M.A.R.T = verified. I tried the following installations with no success: Tiger (10.5) = Disk utility showed my 500gb HD as 3TB Leopard = wouldn’t complete installationLion online (via previous purchase at Mac App Store). At one point I got it to download but it wouldn’t install.Time machine restore to lion. No success because it couldn’t find my Recover HD. Before I go out and spend $600 on a Mac Mini, PLEASE let me know if there is something else I can try.
Your machine has a Serial ATA (1.5 Gb/s) BUS. The new drive is most likely a 3 Gb/s. See if it can be jumpered down. If there is a way for you to move your date back on your machine by 6 months, do it. I now get errors when trying to install Lion until I move the date back a year and then it installs with no problem.
