I’ve a buddy who’s making an attempt to squeeze a bit of additional life from his growing older 2015 13″ retina MBP by changing the manufacturing unit SSD, which just lately bit the mud (flashing folder.) At my path, he picked up a 1TB Essential P3 Plus (common P3 was backordered, however my understanding is that PCIe 4.0 ought to be back-compat…) and a type of low cost NVMe adapters on Amazon. He carried out the bodily set up by following the iFixit information, however just isn’t in a position to see any proof of the disk’s existence in Disk Utility after booting into restoration mode.
I’m in one other state and never in a position to assist in individual, however walked him by means of some primary troubleshooting steps that didn’t resolve the problem. 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 assist for third celebration NVMe drives internally. I do not understand how true that’s, as that is the primary I’ve heard that declare and the individual didn’t cite a supply.
Assuming that IS true, our predicament turns into one among: his manufacturing unit SSD operating El Cap died operating El Cap, and although we have been prepared to put in Large Sur on the brand new drive, we will not try this if it isn’t 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 ordinary?
If the firmware factor is NOT true, my subsequent instincts have 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 moving into the headache of returns and exchanges.
Thanks upfront for any assist or recommendation on this one!