Urgent help needed - SSD no longer showing

Hello. I have an Asus Q501LA Laptop. I replaced the hard drive with an Intel 530 Series 240gb SSD. I have been using Windows 8 on it but wanted to upgrade to 10 like on my desktop.

I created a bootable USB device for the install. I started the install in the OS. It brought up the screen showing that it was updating and installing, then it restarted and went to the black screen with 3 items at the bottom and a large percent circle in the middle. After this completed, it restarted again, but it then went to the screen to boot and install from the USB device. It told me to that the install was started in the OS and to remove the USB and restart to continue this install. I did that, and my laptop went into the bios. I exited and it went right back in. In boot devices, my SSD will not show. If I boot to the USB and go to install Windows from there, it cannot find a drive.

Basically, I think Windows 10 successfully installed, but my computer does not recognize that the SSD is there. I have no idea how this could have happened, but I am at a loss. I use this laptop for school, so I would like to not lose any data. If I have to, most of it is backed up, so it isn't a huge deal, but there must be some way to get it working again. As of right now, my laptop is a paperweight. Anything I can try?

Well, somehow from playing around in the install screen, I got it to restore the previous version of Windows after restarting. After booting back to Windows 8, it gave me an install failed with error "0xC1900101 - 0x2000D The installation failed in the SAFE_OS phase with an error during MIGRATE_DATA operation." I would still like to install Windows 10 at some point, so does anyone know what went wrong?

Hi GoogleAndroid,

I did a quick check and it looks like there's many possibilities. See HERE.

What I wanted to suggest is to perhaps look at one of the free imaging programs, such as AOMEI or Macrium Reflect for future issues. They can be real life savers.

Also, there's Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk, which is something that is very useful. Highly recommended.

With the Win-10 Recovery Tools, you can boot from your flash into a 'portable' OS type of a setting. From there you can access your data should you need to retrieve it from a non-booting system. There are also many useful tools, including both AOMEI and Reflect.

b1rd