I know, you know what you’re doing, but just do this one for me, OK? We’ve all forgotten to plug in a SATA cable, or not quite mounted an NVMe SSD correctly. There’s no shame in it.

Step 1: If you are installing a SATA SSD, check that the SATA cable is connected properly to the drive and your motherboard, and that the drive has a SATA power connector that runs through to your power supply. If in doubt, unplug the connections and plug them in again.

If you’re installing an NVMe SSD, make sure that the slot you’re installing it in supports that size and type of drive — though older PCI Express generations should support newer ones, but at slower speeds.

Step 2: If you suspect this is the problem, you can also try mounting a drive in a different slot on the motherboard, and use a different cable in the case of SATA drives.

It may be that your PC isn’t set up to recognize new SSDs. Checking the UEFI/BIOS can be a good way to make sure.

Sometimes a new drive won’t be recognized by Windows until you initialize it.

Step 1: Select Windows Key + X, and select Disk management from the list,

Step 2: Locate your new drive. You can search for it by drive letter if you know what it should be, but looking at the capacities can help too.

In reality, though, if your new drive isn’t initialized, it will have a black bar along the top of its unallocated space, and will have a small red circle icon next to the drive name.

Step 3: Right-click the drive and select Initialize disk.

Step 4: Choose your preference for partition style, MBR or GPT. You almost certainly want GPT, but select whichever one is right for your needs, then select OK.

Step 5: Wait for the drive to finish initializing, then right-click on the unallocated space and select New simple volume, Follow the on-screen instructions to create it.

Step 6: Your drive should now have the space to install applications and store files and other data.

It’s possible that a conflict between drives has meant your new SSD can’t be recognized because it doesn’t have its own drive letter. We can change that with a simple fix.

Step 1: Press Windows Key + X, and select Disk management from the list,

Step 2: Right-click the SSD you want to change the drive letter for, and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Step 3: If your drive has a letter, select Change. If it doesn’t have one, select Add.

Step 4: Select a new drive letter from the drop-down menu. If your drive already had a letter, you may want to remove that too — though note that can cause problems with any existing apps or games on the drive.

Step 5: When you’re done adding, changing, or removing letters, select OK to finish. Then reboot your PC and see if the drive is recognized.

It may be that something with the drive’s setup is causing it to not be detected. Starting from scratch may be the best way forward.

Step 1: Choose Windows Key + X, and select Disk management from the list,

Step 2: Right-click the drive you are having trouble with, and select iFormat.

Step 3: Select the file system that you want to use (for most people, it will be NTFS), then choose the default allocation size unless you have a very good reason not to.

Step 4: Tick the box for a Quick format and press OK to begin.

Step 5: Wait for the format to finish, then reboot the PC and see if the drive is recognized.