Installing new SSD Macbook Pro Mid 2014

Clean Install of El Capitan or Later on a Clean Disk

1. Restart the computer. Immediately after the chime hold down the (see Note below) keys until a globe appears.
2. The Utility Menu will appear in from 5-20 minutes. Be patient.
3. Select Disk Utility and click on the Continue button.
4. When Disk Utility loads select the drive (usually, the out-dented entry) from the side list.
5. Click on the Erase tab in Disk Utility's main window. A panel will drop down.
6. Set the partition scheme to GUID.
7. Set the Format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
8. Click on the Apply button, then click on the Done button when it activates.
9. Quit Disk Utility and return to the Utility Menu.
10. Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.

Note: [To install the version of OS X that was currently installed use Command-Option-R. To install the original factory version when the computer was new use Command-Option-Shift-R.]

If you have erased the drive, I suggest you specify the older format -- HFS+ extended (journaled). When you install High Sierra, the drive will be converted properly to the newer APFS format.

At this early stage in the life of High Sierra, there is little confidence in Disk Utility's ability to set up APFS Volumes from scratch that are adequate for a new install. Your experience is adding to that lack of confidence.

At this writing, there are no well-known reports of problems with AFPS from any particular type or brand of drives.

Here is the rough timetable of how an Install works:

start download from Mac app store. This takes 20 minutes to an hour.

OR start with a bootable Installer USB stick and skip the download.

Start Installer. You specify disk on which to Install.

Install checks things out and then copies MacOS Base System to the destination drive. Time 20 minutes to as much as 3/4 hour if your drive is slow.

Installer sets startup to the new MacOS Base System and does a Restart.

>> a failure right here means you still have everything on your old drive, (plus about 6GB of MacOS Base system that does not work)

ONLY if Restart was successful do you begin replacing files to move to the new version of macOS. Time 30 minutes to 3/4 hour.

Restart again and comes up running the new version, in Setup Assistant.

>> How far along this timeline do you get before it throws up?

And you are booting from the thumb drive, and running Install macOS form the thumb drive -- not copying its contents manually?

What procedure or helper did you use to make this thumb drive?

and this is High Sierra you are running?

When you erased your new SSD, did you select it by Hardware-name, not just by Volume-name to Erase?

SO the ssd will automatically convert when the new os is being installed?

YES. SSD drives are converted to APFS of the exact form the Installer wants to see (since it does the work).

This proceeds along the most heavily tested path, because most users could not format a drive as APFS and do a new install -- they would most be doing 'upgrade' installs from previous versions.

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Rotating Magnetic drives are not converted at this time, but instead continue as older HFS+ extended format drives for the time being.

Pretty hard for Sierra to deal with APFS since it does not understand APFS formatted disks. You must be using High Sierra to use APFS. For Sierra and below you use HFS+. In High Sierra Disk Utility handles formatting from scratch or converting to APFS quite well.

Rotating drives can be formatted using APFS but it is not recommended. Fusion Drives cannot be formatted with APFS. They must stick to HFS+.

If you use APFS on your startup disk and backup with Time Machine, then you may have a problem if the backup drive is not formatted with APFS when trying to restore files from the backup. See Time Machine and APFS.

and after you initialized the drive, you re-Installed macOS to put a new copy of macOS on it?

Apparently, you prefer working with Grant so I will let you continue doing so.