Chosen Solution
Why can’t I see the SSH to select it to install OS-X? Is the new drive faulty? It said its compatible on the site.
You have a few ways to prep the drive. But before you install the SSD drive in your system you do need to make sure it’s a workable drive for you system. You stated the site you bought the drive stated it would work but they may only imply its Mac compatible (which is nothing special). Its the SATA speed of your system and what the drive can run at that is! So lets double check what you have here can you give us the name & model info of the drive? You can also look at the drive spec sheet either on line or if the drive came with one and compare it to your systems specs (which I’ve linked in your question) You’ll note your system is a SATA II (3.0 Gb/s). If it can’t run at SATA II you’ll need to return the drive. The next issue is your system does not offer recovery services so you’ll need to prep up a USB thumb drive as your OS installer or use a second system as the installer system using Target Disk Mode with a second Mac. If your drive is still working you could leverage it as well using a SATA to USB adapter like this one: Startech 2.5" SATA to USB adapter. It makes no difference which drive is connected. You’ll boot up with your current drive and then prep your new drive. How do I create a USB installer:How to make a bootable OS X 10.11 El Capitan installer driveHow to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer driveApple T/N on Target Disk Mode: Share files between two computers with target disk mode Update (01/07/2017) OK here’s the good news! Here’s the spec sheet for the SSD drive: Sandisk X400 as you can see it states its backwards compatible to SATA II so this drive has auto sense logic to match the system so the drive is good here. So your issue is indeed the drive cable! Heres the IFIXIT guide to replace it: MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Mid 2010 Hard Drive Cable Replacement. But I wouldn’t put in the 2010 version cable as it’s not as good as this one: MacBook Pro 13" Unibody (Mid 2012) Hard Drive Cable.
Not sure if you have tried this, but somewhere along the installation you should be able to click disk utility. It might be in a menu bar or just a plain button. The drive needs to be formatted before being installed to is my bet. You should find your drive and initialize it as GUID partition Map and Mac OS X extended, journaled, it should be the defaults. You may have to reboot in order for the installer to see the disk. I am not sure if you have another mac around but if you do you could connect the drive to it either as a external drive or whatever and use the disk utility within mac rather than doing it through the installer.
The easiest way is to format the SSD first while your original drive is in the MacBook. Then clone your whole drive before installing it into your MacBook Pro. If you can’t format it to GUID then the SSD probably would not suit a Mac.
