Short answer. Yes
If you have problems follow the steps below previously posted.
A new internal drive normally ships unformatted. 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.
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.
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.
A common technique to replace an internal boot HD with an SSD would be to:
attach the SSD as an external drive first through USB/FireWire/ Thunderbolt
use Disk Utility to format the SSD
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)
then open up the computer and swap the drives
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'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.
Thanks, this makes sense but I do not have a casing to use to attach the drive to my computer. However I do have 2 computers so I'm wondering if I can format it by connecting the computer with the unformatted drive to the other computer through Firewire? I seem to remember that to do this you hold down T when turning on ?
That's correct. You start the computer-as-external hard drive while holding down the T key as you power up. If it works, you should see a FireWire icon bopping around on the target machine's display. I assume the same technique works with Thunderbolt, but I've never had the opportunity to try it. I've also never tried to mount a computer with an unformatted drive as a target drive, but I don't see why this shouldn't work. I hope you'll report back and let us know if this works...In future, an external SATA-FW or SATA-USB interface is a handy thing to have around.
it worked with Firewire ! Thanks so much. Only I have another problem... that is very wierd. I restored from a Timeline backup and it doesn't accept my password to login that I have been using for the past 10 years! I have racked my brain and can't work out how it could have changed. Has this happened to anyone else?
Original post: New SSD not detected