Hello ed4750,
How is your SSD connected to this laptop? Before starting this process, make sure the laptop recognizes the SSD as secondary drive. Make sure you are using a USB to SATA cable and also verify if there cable has no damage as this may cause the PC not recognize the drive. Once your SSD is recognized you can also check if the SSD is initialized. Here is how you can do it.
*Please note that before any procedure such as this one, make sure you have a safe copy of all relevant information to avoid any possible data loss.
1 - Go to Control Panel >> System and Security >> Administrative Tools >> Computer Management, Storage >> Disk Management. Once you there, look at the lower section of the dialogue box and look for the SSD usually shown as Disk 1.
*At this point, you may see a message saying that the SSD needs to be initialized. Let the Wizard complete the process. If you are prompt to choose MBR or GPT, please select MBR. If you don't get this message, please right click on the square box that says disk # (i.g. Disk 1) and initialize the SSD. When this is done, please go to step 2.
2 - If the SSD is labeled as unallocated, it needs a partition to be created, please right click on the area where it says unallocated and select New Simple Volume and follow the default options. Allow it to format at the end and once this process is over you should see the SSD labeled properly.
Let us know if this information helped you.
