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Recently, I've updated my 2015 Pro Retina 128Gb with 3rd party Crucial P1, M.2 - 500GB SSD. Installation went smoothly, however couple of months later I need to reset the Mac back to factory settings. However, when I boot a bootable disk with older MacOS (tried El Capitan), I cannot see my SSD in in the list. The very same thing occurs when I opt for Internet recovery. I can't seem to be able to access regular Recovery mode.

Dump of diskutil apfs list:

PFS Container (1 found)
|
+-- Container disk1 B4B09884-195C-48E5-8633-2495993C80E8
    ====================================================
    APFS Container Reference:     disk1
    Size (Capacity Ceiling):      499898105856 B (499.9 GB)
    Capacity In Use By Volumes:   304040103936 B (304.0 GB) (60.8% used)
    Capacity Not Allocated:       195858001920 B (195.9 GB) (39.2% free)
    |
    +-< Physical Store disk0s2 19C3D4AA-9762-408D-B2DD-6EE0CB3A0B50
    |   -----------------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Physical Store Disk:   disk0s2
    |   Size:                       499898105856 B (499.9 GB)
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s1 96DDE259-5E13-3E4D-8B59-5F0944B0278E
    |   ---------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s1 (Data)
    |   Name:                      Mac - Data (Case-insensitive)
    |   Mount Point:               /System/Volumes/Data
    |   Capacity Consumed:         276867944448 B (276.9 GB)
    |   Sealed:                    No
    |   FileVault:                 Yes (Unlocked)
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s2 A212DC02-E96C-4163-99B5-5B0F039AC46A
    |   ---------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s2 (Preboot)
    |   Name:                      Preboot (Case-insensitive)
    |   Mount Point:               /System/Volumes/Preboot
    |   Capacity Consumed:         353087488 B (353.1 MB)
    |   Sealed:                    No
    |   FileVault:                 No
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s3 75D4BED4-321A-482D-BAC6-5E13FCDF674A
    |   ---------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s3 (Recovery)
    |   Name:                      Recovery (Case-insensitive)
    |   Mount Point:               Not Mounted
    |   Capacity Consumed:         613617664 B (613.6 MB)
    |   Sealed:                    No
    |   FileVault:                 No
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s4 947F5AAB-C907-4C73-A72A-C8867D7095C6
    |   ---------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s4 (VM)
    |   Name:                      VM (Case-insensitive)
    |   Mount Point:               /System/Volumes/VM
    |   Capacity Consumed:         3222294528 B (3.2 GB)
    |   Sealed:                    No
    |   FileVault:                 No
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s5 C42F2B53-66E8-4C25-9945-7F9C78BF023D
    |   ---------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s5 (System)
    |   Name:                      Mac (Case-insensitive)
    |   Mount Point:               Not Mounted
    |   Capacity Consumed:         22706814976 B (22.7 GB)
    |   Sealed:                    Broken
    |   FileVault:                 Yes (Unlocked)
    |   Encrypted:                 No
    |   |
    |   Snapshot:                  D70A8E6F-181C-4AB9-B429-063B0201A0E3
    |   Snapshot Disk:             disk1s5s1
    |   Snapshot Mount Point:      /
    |   Snapshot Sealed:           Yes
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s7 AD47BED2-D46A-44EA-BF6C-4287A27375C7
    |   ---------------------------------------------------
    |   APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s7 (No specific role)
    |   Name:                      Partition1 (Case-insensitive)
    |   Mount Point:               /Volumes/Partition1
    |   Capacity Consumed:         835584 B (835.6 KB)
    |   Sealed:                    No
    |   FileVault:                 No
    |
    +-> Volume disk1s8 368949EB-706B-4599-A6E3-85DD7F851FFE
        ---------------------------------------------------
        APFS Volume Disk (Role):   disk1s8 (No specific role)
        Name:                      Volume1 (Case-insensitive)
        Mount Point:               /Volumes/Volume1
        Capacity Consumed:         835584 B (835.6 KB)
        Sealed:                    No
        FileVault:                 No

Dump of diskutil list:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk1⁩         499.9 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +499.9 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume ⁨Mac - Data⁩              277.3 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩                 353.1 MB   disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩                613.6 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩                      3.2 GB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume ⁨Mac⁩                     22.7 GB    disk1s5
   6:              APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 22.7 GB    disk1s5s1
   7:                APFS Volume ⁨Partition1⁩              835.6 KB   disk1s7
   8:                APFS Volume ⁨Volume1⁩                 835.6 KB   disk1s8


/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:                  Apple_HFS ⁨Install OS X El Capitan⁩ 500.1 GB   disk2s1

Attaching 1 more screen grab from the Recovery DiskUtil GUI options:

Basically I can see just a single volume of ~2GB

enter image description here

Any idea how to get target the SSD?

jankoritak
  • 101
  • I see many things wrong, but can't be sure how you arrived there. El Capitan can't read APFS. A Mac won't boot from an MBR disk [FDisk_partition_scheme] Your picture shows OS X Base System which must also be pre-Sierra. How are you getting to Internet Recovery? What key commend? – Tetsujin Mar 06 '21 at 14:45
  • I'm getting into Internet Recovery with CMD+R during boot. My current OS is Big Sur, however I just happen to have El Capitan bootable drive in hand. That's how I ended up with trying to install El Capitan. – jankoritak Mar 06 '21 at 15:14
  • Cmd/Opt/R is internet recovery. I'm still not sure how you got into El Cap recovery from there. – Tetsujin Mar 06 '21 at 15:31
  • That's one of the odd things. I'm unable to trigger regular Recovery mode, only Internet Recovery. Does not matter whether I go with Cmd/Opt/R or Cmd/R, I always trigger Internet Recovery. As I was unsuccessful with Internet Recovery process, I created bootable El Cap disk and pressed Opt key during the boot time. From there I opted to boot with my El Cap bootable disk rather than My Mac. That's how I ended up with El Cap. However, in case I let Internet Recovery go through and opt for "Reinstall MacOS", I'm still presented with El Cap. – jankoritak Mar 06 '21 at 15:58
  • Is there still a viable OS on this 'missing' SSD? If so, I'd use it to get hold of a copy of an APFS-aware installer rather than El Cap. – Tetsujin Mar 06 '21 at 16:06
  • Yes, there is. I can boot latest Big Sur from the SSD and operate the device without any issue. The device is completely usable. However what I'm trying to do is wipe the Mac to factory settings, which is the point where I run into my issue. Can I achieve that without going through the recovery process described above? – jankoritak Mar 06 '21 at 16:22
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    You ought to be able to do it from either regular Recovery or Internet Recovery - but as that doesn't seem to be behaving, I'd set up a boot installer USB that knows what Big Sur is, & not El Cap. See https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/309399/how-can-i-download-an-older-version-of-os-x-macos for sources. – Tetsujin Mar 06 '21 at 16:25
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    That indeed did the trick. I didn't realise how wrong path have I chosen when I oped for El Cap bootable. Thank you! – jankoritak Mar 07 '21 at 06:45

0 Answers0