I just got my Macbook here, and I got a USB with Yosemite 10.10.
I opened up the Macbook, took out the old one, and put the SSD inside.
My SSD fits perfectly (Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB).
Then I plug the USB thumb drive in, and then boot the computer up, and holding the ALT (OPTION) key down. Then I came into the drives that I can boot from. I couldn't see my SSD there, then I took the thumb drive(8GB), and then I began to install Yosemite, after I choose the language, I need to choose where I need to install Yosemite. The hard drive, didn't show up there either.
I get in Disk Utility and find out that my hard drive, isn't formatted, I just want to format it to Mac OS Extended Journaled, I chose it, and clicked erase and when I did that, I got this error:
Erasing the disk failed, Erasing the disk failed with error:
Formatting the file system failed.
I translated the error from Danish, so it could be worded differently on the English version of Disk Utility.
Best Answer
You have to format the SSD without using it as your primary disk.
If you're able to run Mac with the old disk, connect the SSD via external enclosure and format it (or make a clone of the running HDD). After this swap the disks, boot form installer and install OS on SSD.