Chosen Solution
So, I am using a SM951 256GB M.2 SSD with a NGFF M.2 Adapter. I have researched and found them to be compatible with my laptop, a 11" Mid 2013 MacBook Air. The original SSD went bad, and this is a replacement more than an upgrade. I have created a High Sierra (latest) USB installer, and upon using I can see my drive in Disk Utility. I format it as Journaled and start the installer. I select the drive, it starts installing and says about 5 minutes. At the 2 minute mark the screen will go black (restart I presume?) and then show the apple logo. The progress bar below will load about 10% and then it will just boot to the USB again. Inspecting the drive in disk utility shows that about 5GB of it is now used, but it is not bootable. What is happening, and how do I fix it? Can provide pictures and product links if needed… Thanks
While you likely don’t want to hear this you’ll need to put back the original Apple SSD to diagnose if the SSD & adapter combo are bad or if in the process you damaged something. You may want to return the products and just bite the bullet, getting the correct SSD The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs or got with either OWC or Transcend SSD’s
If you are using an SSD and installing High Sierra, Why you format Journaled??. Try Formatting in APFS.
Try this: -First boot to your USB High Sierra drive.
- Open terminal and change the date to today by entering: date 0726021018 (this is for date/ time of: 7/26/18 at 2:10 pm ). High Sierra wont install if the date isn’t set to later than when it was released.
- Next, erase and format the drive through terminal, type: diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ MacintoshHD disk0 This may help, I’ve ran into issues with high sierra and SSDs multiple times and erasing through terminal this way always works. Next, just continue with the installer and cross your fingers that you surpass that 5 minute mark!
