Chosen Solution
Hi guys. I have the MBP mentioned in the title, and I’ve been facing a problem for a few days: the SSD (m.2 nvme Kingston NV1 500GB) is not recognized by the machine. When I open the installer’s Disk Utility (either through Internet Recovery or from the thumb drive), the disk does not appear. I go to the Terminal and give the “diskutil list”, and nothing appears there either. I bought two adapters that are very popular and recommended by other consumers. Because of the problem, I returned the first one thinking it was a problem with him and got another one, from another model, from another seller. It didn’t work either. With this second adapter (which is what I have now), I took another SSD (m.2 SATA) that has Windows installed and put it on to see if it recognized it. Unsuccessfully. I read that it could be outdated NVME SSD firmware, and as I was booting from it in Internet Recovery, there was no way to update it. I put the OS on the flash drive, and still nothing changed. Considering that (1) I changed the adapter twice and (2) I put in two different SSDs (I couldn’t test NVME on another machine, but I bought brand new from an authorized seller; SATA works), I think the problem can only be in the my machine. I reset the SMC and NVRAM every time, and nothing changed. Today I have Big Sur installed (ie the Boot ROM is up to date (System Firmware Version: 432.60.3.0.0)). Any idea what should I do?
Good evening from down under, I will help you to assist in your repair (I just got back from a camp so i am slightly tired). First thing, have you reinstalled the original SSD back in and tested. If this is the case and it worked then your MBP has magically got some kind of locked down thing. If not tho then seems like voltages aren’t getting even close to that Proprietary SSD connector port. If that is the case check the voltages. Just quickly, going onto google and grabbing some more info helps people like me and others diagnose these things quicker. I don’t blame you for this but it’s always a good idea. Back to this repair, my research shows nothing about mac compatibility on their website. This is quite unfortunate because it may be incompatible. have you tried an OWC drive yet?
From my experience Kingston NV1 M.2’s do not work in macs even with the right adapter. I use any samsung M.2 ssd with the correct adapter and I have a100% success rate. (970 EVO’s SSD 980’s, etc) Try a Samsung with the correct adapter. For a detailed answer what model is the machine exactly? Hopefully by now you have solved the problem. Is it one of the following A1502 A1398 (MGX72 MGX82 MGX92 MGXA2 MGXC2)? I did post earlier but my post seems to have been removed!
