Macbook Pro drive ejects on drive initialization, drive firmware scam????

There is no Catch-22. It's far more likely you formatted the drive incorrectly.

Stuck in a Windows computer, it's almost a 100% certainty the drive was given a Master Boot Record partition map.

Put the SSD back in the MacBook. Start it up and immediately hold down the Command+Option+R keys to enter Internet Recovery Mode. Once at the work screen, launch Disk Utility from the top menu bar.

Choose the SSD in the left column as the furthest left indentation so you are selecting the drive's hardware name, and not a partition. Now choose Partition. Make sure you choose GUID Partition Map. Format the drive as APFS. Apply the changes.

This should only take about 30 seconds, if that. When done, close Disk Utility and reinstall the OS.

Laurie_3dmedia wrote:

The Apple created a catch 22

Well, not really. Apple didn't create this machine to be upgradeable at all. There are some 3rd party upgrades available, such as this one from OWC. This OWC explicitly says "Designed for macOS 10.13 and beyond". I have had problems installing SSDs on older versions of macOS, even on machines that supported standard SATA SSD upgrades.

What you have to do is boot the machine from High Sierra first. Use another boot drive for this. Then you should be able to install High Sierra onto the SSD and it should work. I should warn you that I have seen many reports of strange problems like kernel panics by people who have these unsupported upgrades.

As Kurt mentioned, start up with Command+Option+R (not Command+R), connect to wifi to start Internet Recovery or latest supported OSX.

In Disk Utility, make sure you see the SSD model, such as Apple SSD or Samsung / Sandisk SSD. If not, click View dropdown arrow just above the drive list, then Show all Devices.

Click the drive and format as APFS (guid). Does it stay visible?

Also, if you have a USB adapter, have you tried plugging it into your MacBook and formatting / installing externally? OSX doesn’t care if it boots from USB.

Did you try Formatting the SSD to HFS+ instead of APFS? Some older Macs need HFS+ for the initial install.

I have now seen a similar issue with a friend's 2018 Macbook - hers goes to about 8-12 min through the install process before the drive ejects and we get an install error. The only solution that worked was reinstalling from a bootable USB drive, as Internet Recovery failed every time.

If you don't have a boot drive already, bring an empty flash drive to a friend that has a Mac and download the installer and make one - instructions here.

Have you contacted Apple support? there have been some recalls for Apple-supplied SSD drives. this one is well known, and there may be others that are not public:

13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) Solid-State Drive Service Program - Apple Support

.

etresoft wrote:

...

This OWC explicitly says "Designed for macOS 10.13 and beyond".

...

Some of these drives are nVME drives, which are Not bootable unless/until you get the mentioned firmware upgrades installed.

Laurie_3dmedia wrote:

Hi - as mentioned the Mac book Pro is all original including the original Apple SSD. There was never a problem until I did an internet restore, done hundred if not over a thousand of them. Initialized the internal apple SSD, which it did with HFS and GUI.

Continue with new install, quite happy until it asked what drive " NO DRIVE " after this was done no amount of reboots would allow you to see it.

Then you have experienced a hardware failure, and need to contact Apple support -- use the Contact Support link at the top right of every forum page.

Macs do not do well in a “*********** install” environment. What you are attempting is unsupported. Your 2014 MacBook Pro is not a PC. It does not support any kind of hard drive upgrade.

What happened to the SSD that it came with? Put that back in and install Catalina.

Consider the reverse scenario. Suppose we were on a PC-focused discussion forum. You were trying to get a new SSD installed in your PC and you were having some issues with firmware updates. What would that discussion look like? Would you be expected to mention the make and model of the SSD you were attempting to install? Would you be expected to mention the type of PC/motherboard and firmware versions of the machine you were attempting to install it into? If I chimed in with something along the lines of “LOL! Get a Mac!”, would that be considered helpful and constructive?

Why should this forum and Macs be considered any differently? What you are describing is not supported by Apple. What you are attempting is rarely done by Mac users. The few people who do attempt it use very specific parts from specific vendors that are known to work. Those parts come with very specific installation requirements. I have never seen anyone attempt to involve PCs. Most of these upgrades are uneventful, aside from a greater occurrence of kernel panics later on. There are no partition issues.

So, if you want to get this SSD working in this Mac, I suggest you meet us halfway. Describe exactly what hardware you are attempting to install. Explain why you haven’t simply upgraded the operating system first and then replaced the drive. Maybe explain why you aren’t using the original SSD that it came with. I strongly suspect that merely attempting to provide this information will allow you to figure out what is going wrong and resolve the problem yourself with no further consternation.

Well, I'm running a cloned 10.13.6 on an SSD on a 2010 Mac Pro that never had the Firmware patches that the 10.13 Security updates install...

https://x704.net/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8789&p=115471#p115471

Why so bitter with other users trying to help you accomplish what seems impossible to you the way you're doing it?