MacBook Pro SSD Replacement/Installation Issue

[tommwright]

I've just purchased a Kingston UV500 SSD. The replacement went very smoothly however I can't format the drive when trying to clone it.

 

I've done a lot of research around the SSD - people seem to have had success on older macs. I'm using a MBP 10,2 with an adapter to convert mSATA to the proprietary connector. (The adapter has no circuitry and just changes the pin layout on the mSATA connector). However, most of what I've found says either the problem lies with a faulty SSD or faulty sata connection. I know that neither of these are the case as the drive works perfectly and can be read/written to (and formatted) booting ubuntu from usb.

 

When I've booted into the OSX installer after replacing the internal drive, I open up disk utility which can see the disk. I've tried multiple times to erase the entire disk and format to GUID, HFS+, using both disk utility and the terminal commands. Each time the process gets stuck at a message such as 'waiting for partitions to activate', 'waiting for disks to reappear', or similar. I'm able to format as MBR, FAT32 using disk utility, which succeeds, however cannot mount the partition after being formatted. I've also had a hardware Input/output error shown in the terminal.

I tried to format to GPT, JHFS+ using gparted, which worked perfectly, however when booting back into the OSX installer could again not mount the partition or see the drive available for install.

 

I suspect that the issue is driver related within OSX, not containing drivers for the ssd's controller, which is a Marvell 88SS1074. The only information i've found on this is that it is the same controller as a crucial MX300 which has also worked in some older OSX systems, so I'm guessing this is possible. The final thing I tried was to use the OSX Yosemite installer, as I have found posts about the SSD's controller working with older hardware and software. I cloned the drive in linux and this time partitions showed up in disk utility, however I was still stuck unable to mount them, and trying an erase left me stuck back at the same point.

 

If anyone knows about injecting drivers into OSX or has any other ideas any help would be appreciated as I am very stuck at this point and don't have a whole lot of knowledge in that area. My other option is to return the SSD and swap for a Samsung Evo however I would like to avoid this as it would cost an extra $50 or so and my money is tight at the moment!

 

Thanks in advance,

Tom

[thedangerine]

Mac OS technically does not have drivers at all so there really isn't a way to force that to happen. Older mac os versions dont always play nicely with ssd's, I would recommend using an installer for a newer OS version like High Sierra or even mojave as your model does support mojave. You will want to format the disk as APFS aka Apple File System, or MacOS Extended. You will have to use one of those formats to install mac os. Apple actually has a lot of good guides on their website for formatting disks, erasing disks, reinstalling macOS and all kinds of other things that are technically done outside of the operating system. Hope this helps and please hit me with any follow up questions as I know I don't always explain things in the best possible manner

[kirashi]

40 minutes ago, tommwright said:

I've just purchased a Kingston UV500 SSD. The replacement went very smoothly however I can't format the drive when trying to clone it.

--SNIP--

Are you able to perform a clean installation of MacOS just for shits and giggles? Doesn't make sense not to test the basics before trying to clone the existing system disk. That way you can rule out bad hardware and move on to troubleshooting software.

[tommwright]

18 hours ago, AdvancedMicroDisapointment said:

I would recommend using an installer for a newer OS version like High Sierra or even mojave as your model does support mojave.

I've tried using the internet recovery (mojave installer), and to no result disk utility on mojave can't even see the drive.

 

18 hours ago, kirashi said:

Are you able to perform a clean installation of MacOS just for shits and giggles?

This is exactly my problem - I can't even wipe the drive to get it to show up in the installer, never mind clone to it. I've managed to clone the drive in ubuntu, however the mac can't read it just as it can't read a newly erased partition.