MacBook pro mid 2015 (11,5) new SSD not showing up

My old SSD in the MacBook died and I had to replace it, I bought crucial p3 512GB and installed it in and it is not showing up in the recovery or when I open the disk manager, I checked it with my windows PC and the SSD is perfectly fine, is it possible that apple service was wrong and it was a problem with the NVME port not the disk and what can I do with this?

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Feb 13, 2023 02:09 PM

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Posted on Mar 28, 2023 12:06 AM

Found a solution!


Get an external case for your SSD.

Use Disk Utility to format to APFS.

Download whatever OS you'd like on it.

Install that on the SSD.

Then install it in your Mac.


That's it. I did it and it worked perfectly!

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8 replies

Feb 13, 2023 05:16 PM in response to Efisle

What was the highest version of macOS ever installed on this laptop? When using an NVMe SSD in this laptop you must already at some point in the past have installed macOS 10.13+ so that the laptop's system firmware has been updated to work with an NVMe internal SSD. Also, you can only use macOS 10.13+ on this NVMe internal SSD since older versions of macOS don't have the necessary NVMe driver.


FYI, booting into Internet Recovery Mode even using Command + Option + R may still result in only being able to boot the online macOS installer for the OS which originally shipped with the laptop from the factory, which for a 2015 laptop is macOS 10.10 or 10.11 which is too old to work with an NVMe internal SSD. You may need to reinstall the original Apple OEM SSD so you can create a bootable macOS 10.13+ USB installer using the instructions in this Apple article:

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support


FYI, if you have never installed macOS 11.x Monterey before while using the original Apple SSD, then you may want to do so now since the Monterey installer is known to fail when attempting to update the system firmware while a third party internal SSD is installed. Once the Monterey installer updates the system firmware, then any SSD can be installed internally and have macOS 11.x Monterey install work.

What SSD adapter are you using to convert the Apple SSD connector to an M.2 connector? From reading these forums for years, the Sintech SSD Adapter appears to be the most compatible & reliable.

Mar 17, 2023 10:18 PM in response to HWTech

I’m in a similar situation. I had a 1TB Crucial NVMe P1 with an adapter that worked no problems for years. But I’m running out of space so I got the 2TB P3. Same problem. Not reading it at all. Thinking it may be the SSD is just put my old one in…only to now have it not being read. Fortunately I still have the original which I never wiped and I upgrade that to Monterey for the firmware updates like you suggested. Still nothing for the new SSD. Disk Utility won’t read it. Terminal won’t read it. My last thought I’ll get an ext enclosure tomorrow to see if reformatting it will do something.


Just out of curiosity what good is a boot installer if nothing reads the SSD?


Thanks.

Feb 14, 2023 06:39 AM in response to Efisle

You'll need access to another Qualifying Mac which is compatible with macOS 10.13+.


To create a bootable macOS 10.13 USB installer generally requires a Mac from Late 2009 to 2018.

macOS 10.15, a Mac from 2012 to 2019

macOS 11.x, a Mac from Late 2013 to 2020

See this article to find a Qualifying Mac for each OS as what I have give is just generalizations, there are exceptions.

https://eshop.macsales.com/guides/Mac_OS_X_Compatibility


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MacBook pro mid 2015 (11,5) new SSD not showing up

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