MBP 13" 2012 does not recognize Samsung 860 EVO S-ATA SSD?

[Bradamante]

I have a MacBook Pro here, 13" from 2012. To speed it up I just tried to replace the S-ATA HD with a Samsung 860 EVO S-ATA SSD. I pre-installed macOS 10.14.4 on it. I can boot my own MBP 13" 2015 from that SSD. However, the MBP 13" 2012 does not. It does boot from the old HD, but not from that SSD.

That bewilders me a bit. I have put SSDs into MBPs before, like a 2010 15" MBP.

So why would this MBP 13" 2012 not recognize this 860 EVO?

EDIT: The error I am getting that the MBP boots with the SSD but gives me the Question Mark Folder at boot as if there was not HD installed.

EDIT2: When I put the 860 EVO SSD into a USB3 external hard disc case and plug it into the MBP 2015, the drive is recognized fine. Connect it to the MBP 2012 and Hard Disc Utility says: USB3 Drive and then nothing. No partition. Which makes sense I guess because it's APFS-formatted. But it should at least boot when it is build in right?

EDIT3: Currently installed on the MBP 13" 2012 is El Capitan. Do I need a firmware update or something?

EDIT4: The MBP 2012 13" does boot from a USB install stick for Mojave 10.14.4, created via createinstallmedia. Did not try to install the OS obviously, so I don't know if the installer would actually work.

 

[treekram]

El Capitan will not recognize an APFS disk.

Have you tried booting from the external USB drive (hold option key after chime rings)?

Have you kept El Capitan on the 2012 MBP up to date? A firmware update is needed to boot from APFS but it looks like the last security update (2018-004) for El Capitan was on July 9, 2018, after the High Sierra introduction. I know for Sierra, the APFS-enabled firmware updates were applied as part of the security updates - I'm not sure about El Capitan. If you open "About This Mac" (Apple icon at top left), if I recall (Apple stopped putting the build number here), the build number should appear after the Version number and the last security update would 10.11.16 Build 15G22010. If not, it should be in the Software section if you run the "System Report" app.

According to my notes (which doesn't cover all of the firmware updates), my 2012 MBP after the Sierra 2018-001 security update had a Boot ROM version of MB91.00D7.B00 so if it's something significantly lower than that (the "D7" number), you probably haven't had firmware updates applied. Recent firmware updates have numbers like 224.0.0.0. It's possible that your MBP has problems doing firmware updates.

This model also has problems with the HDD cable - sometimes it will work with a HDD but not a SSD. Although you need to figure out the firmware issue.

 

[Bradamante]

Thanks for your reply. The coin dropped when the boot from the Mojave install USB stick worked. The bootloader is on the level of El Capitan and therefore can not recognize the Mojave SSD, either as an external USB drive or built-in. Therefore I had to go the tedious route of installing Mojave from USB stick and then do all kinds of installations again. Works fine now.