Unable to boot into recovery mode on Mavericks Mid 2009 17" Macbook Pro I am trying to restore a new SSD I placed into my MBP using a Time Machine backup on an external HD. In order to do this, I read I need to be able to go into recovery mode as I boot my system up. To do this, I am supposed to press ⌘ Command R at startup. This is not working.

First, I realized that there isn't any startup chimes when I restart my MBP. I followed this thread 
to reset the NVRAM, and it seemed to work as I did get two chimes during this process. Now when I restart, I hear the chime. However, after pressing ⌘ Command R as I load my system, I still cannot get into recovery mode. Instead, as before, I am going directly to my logon screen. 

What can be wrong?
Your MacBook is too old to use Internet Recovery. You will need to reinstall from the restore discs that shipped with your Mac, a retail copy of a 10.6 DVD or a Mavericks USB installer (created on another Mac).

If you still have access to the drive that was replaced you could put it in a USB enclosure and boot from that, then go through the Mavericks install routine, selecting your new SSD as the destination.

To build a USB installer from the Mavericks/Yosemite installer application you can use 3rd-party utilities or follow this procedure...

Download the Mavericks/Yosemite installer but quit it when it tries to run.

Take an 8GB USB stick and name it Untitled.

Then run this command in Terminal (replace both instances of Mavericks to Yosemite if using 10.10 install application)...

/Applications/"Install OS X Mavericks.app"/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/"Install OS X Mavericks.app" --nointeraction