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Fix for – Old/New SSD Not Recognized or Showing up by Computer or Laptop

Last Updated: January 7, 2023

Fixing Solid-State Drive Not Detected in BIOS or Windows

Whatever its new or old, if you’re running out of your Luck! Then it’s quite possible that you’ll end up with a non-recognizable SSD on your desktop or laptop computer. SSD can be un-recognize because of a lot of reasons, it can be your OS or the faulty cable and anything.

And with a couple of simple troubleshooting steps, you can actually fix it on your own. If recently didn’t check your Solid-State Drive in your Computer’s BIOS, then this is the first thing you’ll need to do to get out the SSD Status from the ‘BIOS Drive Listing’.

You can press the ‘designated BIOS key’ on the computer first boot screen to open the BIOS.

#Checking the Solid-State Drive Status in BIOS

BIOS can tell every hardware information about your computer, and yes, even the SSD. After opening the BIOS, you’ll need to look for a setting called ‘Boot options’ or ‘Boot Priority’ or ‘Boot setting’ etc. and anything related to BOOT will find you the drive what you’re looking for.

If you have old BIOS installed on your motherboard then you’ll find something like this;

If you found your SSD in the Boot listing of BIOS, then it means the drive is working perfect and the problem is coming from something else.

If you can’t be able to start your computer then you use ‘Startup Repair Utility Tool by Windows’, and this will bring the OS back if something goes wrong.

If this is your secondary drive, then to identify the running status of drive in your windows, you can check the SSD’s information on “Windows Disk Management” which can show the drive is working with the OS or not. You can search for the ‘disk management’ in windows Starts Menu and it will look like this;

If your drive as looks like the drive given in the above picture mainly ‘unallocated in black’, then it means the drive is empty and need to be allocated by the user (which you can do it by right-clicking on the drive and selecting “New Simple volume”).

If this is your old drive which has all of your important data in it (which recently got un-allocated or un-accessible), then you’ll need to use some DATA Recovery Software in order to bring back the corrupted partition data. Suggested Link: How to Recover, Accidentally Formatted Internal or External Hard Disk Drive Data?

But if the drive looks good to you (mainly in blue color), and doesn’t seem to have a name on it. Then it’s possible that the problem can be fixed by just assigning the Drive Letter to that drive’s partition (which you can do it by right-clicking on the drive and selecting “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”).

There is also a possibility that some of your Motherboard’s Drivers files are missing or corrupted and that can be the reason why your computer creates this kind of problems. The driver what I’m talking about is for ‘Chipset’ and also called ‘Chipset Driver’ which helps OS to interact with the other hardware over different buses.

And the other one is ‘SATA or ACHI Controller Driver’ which is the key for SATA SSD interface and if something goes wrong with this driver it’s possible that you’ll have some problem with having more than one drive in your system.

And it always better to update all of your systems Drivers in order to perform the best out of a dumb machine. So, here are some suggested links which might help you out with that problem;

Let’s continue with if SSD not listed in BIOS;

If that’s the case with you, then it’s totally the hardware’s fault and to find out what’s the actual problem, you’ll need to follow the guide given below.

But before working on a computer, like kind of testing which needs to open the case of desktop or laptop or else busy in some other task, the wearer is advised to wear an anti-static wristband as it can protect the PC from all kind of electrostatic damages. To know more: What Is the Importance of Anti-Static Wrist Bands?
anti-static wristband

#Troubleshooting Hardware Fault in a Laptop

SATA Cable isn’t a problem in most of the laptops because they use an inbuilt SATA Connector on the motherboard to directly connect the drive in. But in some laptops, there is a cable which connects the SSD/HDD to the motherboard’s SATA connector and if that’s the case with your laptop, then just reconnecting the drive can fix the problem most of the times.
The best option for perfectly troubleshooting the laptop is to test it by using some other working HDD/SSD at the place of non-working SSD. If the testing drive works, then it can fully sure you about the SSD you’re trying to use is faulty.
In case if you’re having the same problem on the second working drive too, then it’s definitely the BIOS Problem (which can be fixed by updating it), or the SATA Connector of your laptop’s motherboard which gets faulty. Both of these problems can be only fixed by some professional who has the proper equipment to update the BIOS or to change the connector.

#Troubleshooting Hardware Fault in Desktop

For desktop users, the first thing what you’ll need to do for your SSD is to use some different SATA Slot on the motherboard, to confirm about it’s the faulty slot or not.
Other than changing the slot, the second thing you can try is to use some different SATA Power Cable (which is coming from PSU, you can also use the one attached to the Optical Disk Drive because it uses the same SATA Interface).
If none of the things from above work for you, then changing the SATA cable can fix the problem 99% of all time (and you can use the one who attached to the disk reader/writer).
At last, the only step you left with is to use some other drive HDD/SSD at the place of non-working SSD. If the testing drive works, then the SSD is faulty.
If not fixed, then it’s a BIOS Problem (which can be fixed by updating it but don’t try to do it on your own).

Suggested Links:

“That’s all for now, thanks for sticking with the article, and you know it will always good to let me know about the article, in the comments down below.” 🙂