No Mac OS will install on any of my PCIe ssd drives

[rydeguy]

Hi I purchased a second hand from eBay from a business a MacBook Pro retina13 inch mid 2014, the laptop itself is in great condition but came without an OS. Not a big deal one would think. I did research on what sort of drive to purchase and initially I purchased crucial nvmem2 drive, and appropriate adapter. The Mac can see the drive but will not install the OS if the drive is inserted into the bay, but will install if I use an external enclosure, not happy with that, I did further research and purchased an INDMEM ssd drive. I've followed their instructions/guides, YouTube videos etc, I cannot get anything to install onto this drive. It goes to nearly the end of the install when the process gets to the first restart, upon booting up it either boots into recovery mode, or back onto the desktop of the os running from the external drive. Having become frustrated with that I then purchased a TIMETEC drive after ensuring it would work for my machine based on it's EMC. Again I'm in a continuous loop, I've tried everything from High Sierra up to Big Sur, nothing will install, it boots me back into recovery mode or back onto the desktop. I've tried the recommended formats, apfs, Mac OS extended journaled, I've tried from recovery mode itself, I've tried carbon copy cloner, I've tried restoring from a sata drive. The only thing I haven't done yet is from a virtual machine (I saw that somewhere) I truly do not understand why the OS won't install, I'm ready to smash everything against the wall, has anyone encountered this and gotten around it? Please help. All drives I've tried are 500GB.

thanks
Reg

 

[Slartibart]

I change the SSD of one of these MBP following iFixit’s guide replacing the original with a OWC Auro Pro X2 ssd. I do not remember if I installed the OS then via internet recovery or if I had created a bootable external external drive - but all relevant info for both procedures is available on the iFixit site linked above. I suggest trying internet recovery.

 

[glenthompson]

What happens if you install MacOS on the SSD using an external enclosure, boot from it, make sure it works, then install the SSD into the MBP? Will it boot? If not then my sues is issues with the adapter for the SSD as the MBP uses a proprietary connector. When upgrading the SSD in my MBA I decided to go with the OWC drive since it doesn't require an adapter.

 

[rydeguy]

it doesn't boot when I insert the working drive from the external enclosure. The thing is I'm trying to avoid having to spend yet more money I've already spent close to £180 already. That will be a last resort for me, thanks for the suggestion.

 

[saudor]

macos is really picky about what nvme drives it works with. so far things like western digital sn750 (but not sn750se), sn850 and reportedly sn770 work well too.

do you have a store with a good return policy?