Chosen Solution
Hello everyone. I am about to lose my mind! Can any of you lovely, helpful people that are much more patient and smarter that I am help me out? About a year or so ago… I accidentally dropped a glass cup from about waist height onto my MacBook’s display. The display broke and shortly after, I was getting the white folder with a grey question mark (black background). I procrastinated on fixing it and here we are now. Just last week, I replaced the screen assembly. I then went into Disk Utilities from Recovery Mode and my OEM drive wasn’t showing up. Assuming the drive was dead… I went into Recovery Mode with a Kingston Sata SSD plugged up via USB with my handy adapter. From Recovery Mode, I formatted the Kingston and installed El Capitan (that’s what was offered in Recovery Mode). I then upgraded to Sierra via the App Store link offered on Step #4 on this Apple webpage: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208202 (because Sierra wasn’t being offered to me in the App Store under the “Updates” section. So I tried to do the same thing for High Sierra but I got a message saying that the “computer has a missing firmware partition.” All of this was done in the efforts of upgrading to macOS High Sierra (or Mojave, ideally), so that my Intel NVMe with an adapter could be recognized… all so that I could install Mojave on it and so that I could finally enjoy my Macintosh again. So… what I went and did was purchase an MZ-JPV1280/0A4 SSD (the same exact drive as my OEM drive that I got with my MacBook) on eBay. I did this so that I could upgrade to Mojave so that my Intel could be recognized. I received it today, popped it in, went into recovery mode, and I selected “Install Mojave.” I was part way through the install process (33% on the loading bar) when I got an error. I went into disk utilities and the drive is no longer there! Exiting disk utilities and going back to the main Recovery Mode section, El Capitan is being offered and not Mojave. Regardless, is my MacBook bricking these SSDs? This is crazy weird. Can anyone guide me in the correct direction? I am eager to start getting the most that I can out of this machine. Using the MacBook with Sierra installed on the external Kingston doesn’t allow me to using the MacBook to its fullest potential. Thank you to anyone and everyone that takes a look at this post!
You are facing a few different issues! Your replacement Apple custom SSD is likely bad! You also had an issue within your systems firmware as you are jumping between a drive which was setup with APFS while your system doesn’t know how to deal with it yet as you haven’t upgraded the systems firmware so your system doesn’t know how to deal with it (its still expecting HFS+ volume). Then to add to this you’ve used cloning software! So your onboard recovery partition is missing! You also talk about using an Intel SSD. I’m assuming a M.2 SSD with an adapter. I really don’t recommend using these. I’ve got a drawer full (I think close to 80 now). What the seller of these magical adapters don’t tell you it Apples SSD are not quite the same as the M.2 drives! To add to this the construction of these adapters have quality issues and the overtime the SSD will wear out from CRC errors and wear leveling. The best thing I can tell you is to fix your original Apple Custom SSD and install the proper macOS version. Return both of the SSD’s & adapter and get your money back! Review this great guide The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs As you didn’t tell us the SSD size you are looking for look at the BeetsTech store front to find the one you want. I have no finical interests in either BeetsTech or iFixit here. I’ve found both are dependable merchants.
