S.M.A.R.T errors when trying to upgrade from High Sierra to Big Sur

You should be able to install the third party NVMe SSD and install macOS 11.x Big Sur without any issues as long as you already installed macOS 10.13+ at some point in the past. The Big Sur installer does not (or at least did not use to) have any restrictions for installing for the first time with only a third party SSD installed internally.

If you are not going to use an OWC Aura SSD, but instead an M.2 SSD, then I highly recommend you use the Sintech SSD Adapter since it seems the most compatible & reliable. Also keep in mind that not all SSDs are compatible with all computers and using an M.2 SSD means the SSD manufacturer won't help support you on a Mac if there are any problems.

FYI, not all SSD SMART failures are actually real or fatal. Sometimes even if there is an issue, it can be corrected depending on what the problem is. Unfortunately the Apple SSDs don't have a lot of health information to assess their condition. Plus even if the SSD is reset to fix any SMART errors, the SSD status will most likely still show as "SMART status failed" in macOS.

If for some reason the recent Big Sur installer won't install to a third party SSD, then you can reinstall the original Apple OEM SSD and try installing Big Sur to an external drive....I don't know if this will allow the installer to work or not since the installer typically wants to use the internal SSD to update the system firmware and may refuse since the Apple SSD has a "SMART Status failed". This would be the last resort without knowing why the SSD has a SMART failure.

Roxham7 wrote:

I have already clone the apple HD to the SSD used enclosure and carbon Copy Cloner and it seems fine, although the copy is about 20GB smaller and couldn't figure out why.

Did it also restore the Recovery Partition (usually not very large)?

I know CCC doesn't copy some temp and/or cache files.

You may want to double check the CCC logs and settings just to make sure you got everything. I've never looked too closely at CCC, but I've never had any issues using it to clone a macOS boot volume.

then going to upgrade to Big Sur while still inside the enclosoure to see if everything works.

Hard to say if the Big Sur installer will run due to the SMART status failed state of the internal SSD, but you can try. The only risk is why the SSD is showing a SMART status failed since the Big Sur installer will use the internal SSD to update the system firmware even though you are installing Big Sur to the external SSD.

I would say if you can boot the new SSD externally, then install it internally & try upgrading to Big Sur. I think that would be the safest option since we don't know why the Apple OEM SSD has a SMART status failed. I think this will upgrade to Big Sur just fine this way....if not, then reinstall the Apple OEM SSD internally & try to upgrade to the external SSD.

FYI, make sure you don't have any third party 32 bit software on your system since macOS stopped supporting 32 bit apps with macOS 10.15 Catalina. Any 32bit apps which require an uninstaller probably should be uninstalled or upgraded to 64 bit versions prior to upgrading to Big Sur.

32-bit app compatibility with macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 and later - Apple Support

Just another quick question, when I partitioned my SSD, it put a both volume into one container even though they have different format, one is APFS and other one is MS-DOS for Windows part to clone bootcamp on it is it ok to be on same container? Because on my original apple SSD underneath of APPLE SSD, bootcamp is a physical volume and then there is a container which has Macintosh HD inside. (attached is a picture of original SSD.

If you have an APFS volume/container, then it cannot have another volume within it for another file system. All volumes within an APFS Container will be AFPS volumes. The first physical drive shown in the screenshot is not actually showing any APFS Containers. I'm not sure an APFS Container is created when using an external drive especially when using High Sierra, it may only create a regular partition with the APFS file system on it. You may want to double-check that it is indeed the APFS file system and not HFS+ (aka MacOS Extended). Perhaps that can explain some of the 20GB difference between the original & the clone?

Also, I don't use BootCamp, but I think it may be better if you had used Bootcamp Assistant to prepare the Windows partition for you. Everything I've read on this forum suggests that is the best course of action (including removing when removing Windows). Just something to consider in case you encounter issues. Perhaps @BDAqua knows more about it.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Roxham7 wrote:

@BDAqua Thank you, If I run the Smart Utility and it doesn't shows any issue is it wise and might solve issue if I back up and factory reset and restore and upgrade to latest version, then clone after that ?

If macOS or Disk Utility is reporting "SMART status failed", then the SSD is telling macOS this fact. Unfortunately this status will restrict what macOS will do with this SSD. This means at least one of the SSD's health attributes is critical. DriveDx & Smart Utility will just show us the actual health attribute details and which attribute has gone critical.

However, this SMART status failed does not necessarily mean the SSD cannot be used. It would depend on what the SSD's health attributes show whether it can be safe to keep using the SSD especially if you monitor its condition regularly. Some of these apps can alert you every time a drive's health attribute changes, while other utilities will only alert the first time or whenever the attribute reaches a critical value. Unfortunately Apple's SSDs do not contain too many health attributes which makes them much harder to assess their condition especially if it has triggered a SMART status failed condition. If you post the complete DriveDx text report for the SSD, I would be happy to review it for you. DriveDx has the better & easier to read output than most of the other similar utilities. While most of these apps utilize the same core open source utility to retrieve the health information, the different apps tend to display the output differently. I have found the DriveDx text report the easiest one to read and that app tends to be the easiest for people to use as well, plus it tends to include a few extra bits of information with some drives.

Try one of these two…

You can use Drive DX to possibly get a better view of Drive health…

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx

Thanks to Jack-19…

It may be wise to run SMART Utility to check the drives' health. 

My guess is yes, that may work.