New SSD initialized showing No Media

Hey all. I just got a new SSD to install into my laptop. Toshiba Q Series Pro HDTS325XZSTA 2.5". I bought an external casing for the HDD for when I replaced it, but to clone the Laptop software over, I have the SSD in the external case for now.

When I went to Disk Manager to get it setup, I right-clicked and initialized it under MBR. It's assigned a drive letter. However, it shows No Media and a size of 0, both on my PC with USB 2.0 (Windows 7) and my laptop USB 3.0 (Windows 8).

I have plenty of time to return this drive for a new one if that's the case, but I want to know if I'm doing something wrong before I go through that process. I've never had this kind of problem before.

 

What do you mean by initialized?

Did you create a new partition and formatted it?

 

I right-clicked and it gave the option to "Initialize" it, and it let me choose between MBR or GPT format. So I picked MBR. At that point, I read that I shouldn't partition it if I'm going to clone onto it, since apparently it'd create its own partition, so I let it as is. Since the software wasnt recognizing the drive, I figured I'd try to partition it, since it's not reading any space on it. When I went to do that, it shows "No Media" and it won't let me format or partition it now. Tried to format in DOS with the command line and it gave me a message that it couldn't read it.

Do I have a dead drive, or did I miss a step?

 

Try doing it from a pre-Windows environment using a boot CD. Download free MiniTools Partition Wizard Bootable CD ISO file (link at bottom of page), burn it to CD, put it in your optical drive, and reboot. Using that tool, create at least one partition on the initialized drive, format the partition and assign it a drive letter. Windows should then recognize the drive.

 

I like to use GParted, it is a linux software, that you can get on a bootable iso.

Here's the download link.

If GParted doesn't see your drive, it's a good sign that it is broken to the point of no return.