An Error occurred while preparing the installation of macOS Monterey!

Is an Apple SSD installed? I ask because I had problem with upgrading late 2013 MP to Monterey.

A while ago I replace the internal Apple SSD with an NVMe drive with adapter in my late 2013 MP. I successfully updated to Big Sur with no problem but could not update to Monterey. Could not even install Monterey on a blank external drive. Then I Googled and it appeared that an Apple internal SSD has to be installed in order to update the firmware and OS boot loader. I installed the original Apple SSD which had Mojave and updated successfully to Monterey. I then booted from my Big Sur NVMe SSD and successfully updated to Monterey. I am typing this from that OS now.