If you're following the technique I've outlined, it's wise to try booting from the new external SSD before installing it internally, just to make sure the computer recognizes the drive as bootable. That way, once you restart the reassembled computer, you can at least be sure that there's a drive with a bootable operating system available. If you have run into such a problem, you must be looking for a quick solution. The new hard disk drives usually do not pose such problems and even when they do they can be easily fixed.

then open up the computer and swap the drives When you buy a new SSD hard disk and it does not get recognized by Windows, it could get very frustrating.

clone the operating system+user data from the internal HD to the external SSD using Disk Utility, SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner (you can also do a clean operating system install by downloading an installer from the App Store and installing it on the new drive).

However, for those that dig a little deeper, Windows will try to use the standard Optimize for the drive on a regular basis, something you should not do to an SSD. For some, this may not be an issue as the read/write performance is still there.

attach the SSD as an external drive first through USB/FireWire/ Thunderbolt Recently, a Windows Server build was recognizing my SSD drive as a standard hard disk drive.

What steps have you already taken? If you can give us a detailed list of the things you've already done, in order, it will be easier to determine where the problem is.Ī common technique to replace an internal boot HD with an SSD would be to: A new-stock but discontinued device can be an exceedingly good buy. Of course, if the way you installed this SSD was to remove the previous internal HD and install the SSD in its place, without formatting the new SSD and installing a bootable operating system first, then there's no operating system or formatting utility at all. A retailer may advertise, for example, a Kingston SSD, but without checking you. Unless the operating system on the old boot drive posts a dialog box offering to format the unrecognized drive, the computer doesn't 'detect' anything because there isn't anything the operating system can speak to yet. A new internal drive normally ships unformatted.

Pc not recognizing new ssd