Mid 2015 MacBook Pro SSD swap.

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Mid 2015 MacBook Pro SSD swap.

I have a used mid 2015 MacBook pro I picked up secondhand to repair and give to my little cousin. It is the base version of the 15" with the 2.2Ghz i7 and no dedicated graphics, when i purchased it, it had no SSD or Battery but otherwise was in good condition. (I bought it from a Goodwill and they shredded the drive for privacy concerns) I purchased one of those adapters on amazon that converts the apple proprietary connection into a standard M.2 connection and a 500Gb Crucial P3 NVME SSD (It's Gen 3 by 4, the same as the OEM drive) and I can not get it to detect the drive while it is in the internal slot. I have tried the drive in an external enclosure and it works fine. I have done this swap once before and so i tried that dive that already had a MacOS install on it in the internal slot and it booted up, so its not the adapter. (that drive was just a random 128Gb I had laying around that I was using do do some repairs on a second MacBook.) I tried The new crucial P3 in the other MacBook thinking that it may be a firmware update that the new one was missing but no luck, it didn't show up in that one either. When I say it doesn't show up I mean I've booted into internet recovery and I made bootable installers for Catalina, Big Sur, and Monterey. And no matter which one I boot into, Disk Utility cannot see the drive and the "Reinstall MacOS Utility can't see it either. I did however manage to use my personal MacBook and an SSD enclosure to wipe the drive and install MacOS Monterey using the updater tool in MacOS, and I can plug the drive in using USB to the other MacBook and it will boot to it but the moment I take it out of the enclosure and put it in the internal slot it disappears and won't boot. If it helps the generic M.2 I had laying around is some cheap no-name one out of a Clevo rebranded laptop that a friend gave me to tinker with when it broke, so it was initialized and had a previous windows install on it. I even made a second bootable external drive hoping that maybe it had something to do with initializing the drive in my SSD enclose, but no luck, even with it installed and me booted into MacOS, Disk Utility can't see it. Any Advice other than simply take it to a Genius Bar would be grateful, I'm not trying to be sold on a new one, I just want to fix this one. I'm trying to keep this MacBook out of a landfill.

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Jan 22, 2023 12:46 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

66,686 points

Jan 25, 2023 09:22 AM in response to SkullCandy7777

In order to use an NVMe SSD requires booting to macOS 10.13+. It also requires that the laptop also had macOS 10.13+ installed at some point in the past so that the system firmware was updated to work with an NVMe SSD. If the system firmware was never updated, then the only way to do so now would be to install an original Apple OEM SSD so that macOS 10.13+ can be installed which will update the system firmware update to work with an NVMe SSD.

Try booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to see if it will boot to the macOS 12.x Monterey installer, but unfortunately some Macs will only boot to the online installer for the OS which originally shipped from the factory.

Another option would be to create a bootable macOS USB installer (11.x Big Sur is best), but this requires you have access to another Qualifying Mac that is compatible with the OS you are creating the installer for. If macOS 12.x Monterey was not installed previously, then it will not be possible to install Monterey now because the Monterey installer will not update the system firmware with a non-Apple SSD installed internally (there is a way around this assuming the system firmware is at least a certain version...190.x.x.x.x+ I believe).

Also, the Sintech SSD adapter seems to be the most reliable & compatible adapter...from reading these forums for several years, at least that is the one which seems to have the fewest issues.

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

66,686 points

Jan 27, 2023 03:48 PM in response to SkullCandy7777

FYI, I hope the SSD is meant for that model laptop. Apple made several variants of these SSDs where they may have the exact same connector, but macOS may not work with an incorrect SSD even though a non-Apple OS will work perfectly fine....I discovered this by accident years ago.

I can sort of see why Apple may restrict a system firmware update to an internal drive, but I always believe people should have a choice in the matter if they want to risk overriding it. It does not help that OEMs don't utilize a dual firmware or a hardwired default to revert to in case of a flawed update.

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Answer 3

Jan 27, 2023 10:43 AM in response to HWTech

Thank you, I don't Know what firmware version it is on, so I ordered used 128Gb Apple OEM SSD to try and use a bootable installer I have for Big Sur then just update it from there to Monterey so as to make sure it has the latest firmware, I will update this tread after to let you know if it works or not (it's supposed to be delivered today). It's just one more thing I had to buy because apple in their infinite wisdom won't allow you to update the firmware if you're booted to an external drive. What if my SSD slot dies? I mean I can still network boot and I can still use an external HDD or SSD but I can't update the firmware?!?

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Mid 2015 MacBook Pro SSD swap.

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