I’ve a good friend who’s attempting to squeeze a bit of additional life from his ageing 2015 13″ retina MBP by changing the manufacturing unit SSD, which not too long ago bit the mud (flashing folder.) At my route, he picked up a 1TB Essential P3 Plus (common P3 was backordered, however my understanding is that PCIe 4.0 must be back-compat…) and a kind of low-cost NVMe adapters on Amazon. He carried out the bodily set up by following the iFixit information, however shouldn’t be capable of see any proof of the disk’s existence in Disk Utility after booting into restoration mode.
I’m in one other state and never capable of assist in particular person, however walked him by means of some fundamental troubleshooting steps that didn’t resolve the difficulty. He was operating El Capitan(!) on his inner disk when it bit the mud, so the Web restoration is for El Capitan. Whereas Googling I got here throughout an previous thread on one other discussion board that stated Excessive Sierra was the primary model of macOS so as to add crucial firmware-level help for third get together NVMe drives internally. I do not understand how true that’s, as that is the primary I’ve heard that declare and the particular person didn’t cite a supply.
Assuming that IS true, our predicament turns into one in all: his manufacturing unit SSD operating El Cap died operating El Cap, and although we had been prepared to put in Large Sur on the brand new drive, we will not do this if it is not seen in Disk Utility. How can we get Excessive Sierra or newer put in within the “base system” storage (restoration mode, et al) in an effort to “see” the brand new SSD and transfer ahead as normal?
If the firmware factor is NOT true, my subsequent instincts had been that both PCIe 4.0 disks are solely backwards suitable if there’s firmware to acknowledge them (I do not know if that is true or not) or the brand new drive could have been manufacturing unit formatted as NTFS which isn’t natively suitable with macOS. Even then, I think about it ought to nonetheless present in Disk Utility and have the ability to be formatted from there?
Failing all of that, he could have a DOA disk or adapter. We try to exhaust all different trains of thought earlier than stepping into the headache of returns and exchanges.
Thanks prematurely for any assist or recommendation on this one!
