2015 Macbook pro 13" SSD not recognized

Thanks all, i'm signing off. All evidence points to a failed "Apple SSD Controller" which i must assume is a motherboard component. Neither SSD media works. System profile shows the mystery contorller with nothign attached. The SSD media showed up twice - once to format and once afterwards, never to be seen before or since.

So, since this was never a particularly good machine, and it looks like an expensive repair, I guess I'm done. Sigh.

If anyone knows better, LMK. I only followed this line of diagnosis sinc there was an expired extensded service action from Apple on bad SSD/M.2 media. Apparently that is not my issue this time.

G

Well, that was my point and my assumption. Yet i found it odd that BOTH the original and the replcement had the same symptoms. Possible, yes, but probable, no.

Anyway.....i finally did boot from an external drive, that had a recovery partition from 10.11.3 if i recall.

I connected to wifi. I ran disk utility (try, try again), and guess what? It saw the SSD where the "internet recovery" version did not. I partitioned and formatted it (APFS, GUID). My suspicion is that the original is OK too, but **something** dramatic happened to make it vanish. If you recall it was working normally, never moved, no trauma, just suddenly "?"

Now this seems like a happy ending, but not quite. I then performed "reinstall MacOS" and it began the process. It failed (3X) "cannot connect to recovery server" (or similar) message. Is this a known issue or do i need to call Apple and ask them why their server is not responding?

I should note i dont need my files - i have copies of those. I just need a copy of MacOS. Any reasonable copy and then i can upgrade to latest.

TIA.

1. Amazon, New. Many reviews that it worked. Not very complicated. Genius at APple agreed "that's all i'm going to do" (except of course with a $400 apple branded part)
2. Can't recall which Mac OS. Likely next to latest. No way to check.
3. Cannot format since disk utility can't see the drive - i merely want to see the media - from there i have many options.
4. I suspect now that the original media was and is fine.

Oh, one more thing, this series MBC are really odd. I should have m,entioned its an A1708, but the diagnosis logic ought not change.

These are not the format common for MVNe drives (M.2?). These are basically NV ram on an adapter

[Link Edited by Moderator]


I'm not sure what happened - some moderator removed my link which showed the drive format for the A1708. I specifically added the mdoel and link since a lkink proivided to me was to am M.2 (?) format SSD, not the one nor the adapter used here...

The link provided (to OWC) was to the exact drive i linked to. What am i supposed to do with it? Is there some specific information on that page that could help? A quick scan didnt indicate it.

TIA,

Yes, when i have more time i plan to try this. But i was hoping there might be some "BTDT" to give me more clues. Since the disk utility doesnt see the drive however, i'm not all that hopeful. I do have a bottable impage from another MBP that i can probably use....

Remember i did get an external to (sorta) work. But i cant just update that - its my bootable backup from another machine and it cannot go to that OS version.

But that's nto the big issue at the moment. This actually just gets more and more frustrating - the system is now showing to be inconsistent (intermittent problems).

So, in the meantime i found a bootable clone on a USB drive that would actually work, and successfully booted.

However, over many different boots and tries to deal with various issues:

1. The internal SSD (which, the **first** time from an old external drive showed up in disk utility, and i was able to format so it could take an OS) is no longer visible as media or the volume that was created. So i cannot install an OS onto it. -- note, i was able to download the Big Sur installer and have it on the USB/external.
2. And now, the external (USB)drive often will not show on "option startup" (select bootup drive) - all i can get to is internet boot- and that wont allow me to install anything on the SSD (even if it is visible)

My guess is that there is an intermittency on the [SATA?] but or whatever controller handles that SSD card.

I'm not sure this is worth fixing.

Thanks

I was wondering if that might be the problem. Bad on Apple for not having a clear error. Now, how do i install an OS on a machine that has no optical or other drive and no media?