Upgrading Early 2011 Macbook Pro...Help?

[Lostpuppy1989]

Greetings,

Looking for some help, I've hit a wall in researching a solution and can't find any scenarios that fit my situation.

Backstory: I wanted to upgrade my macbook pro in memory and drive space, so I purchased a compatible SSD to replace my hard drive with. Bought a SATA III 2.5 inch cable to clone my new SSD. On initial hookup the new drive was recognized by disk utility and I was able to reformat it, per the instructions and Youtube videos, and then use a program called SuperDuper to clone it. I thought the clone went by too quick but the program said it was complete. I then unscrewed the laptop and replaced the old hard drive with the new SSD.

Once I did rebooted the computer I got the grey question mark file on the screen and I was stuck from there. Reinstalled the old drive and the computer worked fine, but now it won't recognize the SSD so I can try to reattempt the process.

My Problem: Why isn't the SSD being recognized in Disk Utility anymore? How do I get it to reappear?

 

[rhett7660]

Have you tried connecting the HD via usb not SATA?

Did you verify prior to connecting the new hard drive that you could boot off the drive? I know you mentioned, it went by to fast and you installed it, but did you verify that it would boot off the drive prior to installing?

 

[Fishrrman]

You used some kind of dock or external enclosure to do the first initialization?

And you're saying that when you put the drive into the same enclosure/dock/etc. now, it won't "show up" at all in Disk Utility?

To eliminate hardware problems, I'd try a different USB cable, or a different enclosure/dock/etc. first.

You might even try connecting to a different -Mac-, if you have one.

Other than that, if you can't get an SSD to be seen by Disk Utility -at all-, I'd reckon the drive has failed on you...

 

[CoastalOR]

DELETE. I needed to read your post more carefully. The only thing I can think of is bad/intermittent external and/or internal cables or a failed SSD.