Cannot upgrade to Monterey with non-apple SSD.

Given months have passed, probably a gross engineering oversight that doesn't have an easy resolution short of swapping drives (who wants to take their machine apart???). The idea of having to reinstall an Apple drive to upgrade to Monterey, then swap back to the regular SSD is asking a bit too much, especially for anyone whose computer expertise is marginal. How this issue even got to this point is simply mind boggling.

I wanted to take it step by step and I do not want to make a mistake and accidentally end up making my MacBook Pro Useless. I did it on Monday, I gave me a "?" on the startup when I put the original apple ssd drive. The good thing is that I have a thumb drive that can fit into it to make my USB thumb drive to be a bootable. I formatted my USB drive since I couldn't install Mojave or EL Capitan out of Box, so I have downloaded macOS Monterrey and I wanted to put it on my USB thumb drive to install macOS Monterrey via USB. So I did that and It didn't fail on me. I went back to my 3rd party SSD, it was running Big Sur normally, but it takes a while for the apple logo to pop up when I turn on my Mac. I attempted to get Monterrey and it went forward. It was stressful and an obstacle course to get my macOS Monterrey installed. otherwise if I cannot able to Get Logic Pro or Final Cut Pro due to the requirement to upgrade to the latest macOS, it would be so difficult and I woudn't able to create.

Yes a mac book is compatible should be the same SSD you could download MacTracker app and it will tell you all about your apple computer and should also list what ssd it came with factory as well.

Go to iFixit and find your model and year Mac. It has excellent instructions for working on Macs (and PC's too)

You can do a clean install on your original SSD. Even a 128GB is bigg enough for a clean install with nothing else

wow so glad i did not wipe my internal drive i updated it to Monterey first then i clean installed mac os big sur on my external 1 tb drive and updated it to Monterey , glad i kept the OS in there this is a Imac so wasn't about to tear it down and install just went with 1 tb SSD in thunderbolt 2 drive enclosure.

Kennaugh wrote:

I have just seen a different list of eligible MBPs from Apple and the 15" late 2013 is no longer there (though I saw it on their list earlier today). They seem to have changed their mind.

Nothing has changed here...

macOS Monterey hardware requirements—

https://www.apple.com/macos/monterey/#section-router

but my question is why would apple for any reason really do this they have to know that people upgrade right . so make no since as to why they would do it anyone confirmed withe apple support at all? curious at to what they would say.

Would this also account for ridiculous slow boot times on a

iMac Retina 5K 27 inch 2019

3,6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

48 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB

3 TB Fusion Drive

booting from an external SanDisk Extreme SSD 1TB (over Thunderbolt) ?

Does the iMac also need an EFI update?

My system worked smooth under Big Sur, and the external SSD has proven a smoother and faster experience than the internal Fusion Drive (until Monterey came along and booting now takes about 30 minutes on average).

Encountered issue where apple ssd showed but is grayed out when about to install monterey and a message says that i cannot use it because its encrypted or something. I really dont remember the exact message, sorry

Could you share part number of your genuine Apple SSD?

I do not have one and am considering buying one second hand.

But would like to know original Mac Pro Late 2013 part number of a SSD.

There are a lot available but most of them come out of MacBook's. Compatible? Don't know..... ;-)

SSD is the type of storage. It is not relevant if it is soldered or not, except that in your case it is surely the original from Apple. The real question in your case is: is your mac model supported in Monterey? What year is it?

@lllaass

I did the same thing with my MP2013, although I saved my Apple SSD in an enclosure and can attach it via USB. If I do this and make that the boot disk, will it accept the firmware update that way?

Alternatively, what about trying a recovery restart and install it that way?

Thank you!

My macbook is a Early 2015 Retina.

I upgraded to Monterey on my older 120 GB Macbook SSD and now the macbook no longer recognises my Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB.

I have now the strong feeling the new update has flashed some hard components.

Anyone who had success in the process with the same hardware?

In recovery mode, can you see the non-apple disk?

About a week ago I upgraded to Monterey on a OWC 1TB (mini 2014). Everything went smoothly and was running fine for the last week. I sat down to find the mac with the black screen question mark folder.

• I don't think there were any power outages (my other 2 machines were still running)
• A quick search uncovers a bunch of issues with the OWC drives similar to what I'm seeing
• the 2014 MM is a huge pain to swap SSDs, so I want to be sure its a firmware issue and not a bad drive.
• The OWC SSD is missing in recovery mode (I have a samsung SATA drive that does show up... so the aforementioned firmware issue seems unlikely in my case)
• Since Monterey installed, can I assume my firmware is already updated? Or would this randomly brick the machine a few days later?