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Let's look at the reasons why your MacBook does not see the SSD disk during system installation, or after installation and during operation.

This article is suitable for all MacBook Pro and Air models released in different years. There may be some differences in the architecture or description of the Mac OS version.

Initial disk setup

To work with an SSD, you need to format it into a file system that the device supports: APFS, ExFAT or HFS+. The new APFS file system is great for using built-in SSDs, but converting external SSDs and hard drives to this format poses certain problems, which we will discuss below.

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MacBook doesn't see SSD partition

If the SSD partition does not appear in the Finder window or on the desktop, but Disk Utility recognizes the drive, then there is a formatting problem. You can convert a disk to one of the supported file systems only when using Disk Utility.

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After launching the utility, you need to select the volume of the required SSD drive, then click on the “Erase” button at the top of the screen and specify the supported file system in the “Format” section. We need to choose ExFAT or Mac OS Extended (this is HFS+, most users can use the encryption and case insensitive option).

Disk is not visible in Time Machine

When the MacBook Pro gives an error or does not see the SSD during an attempt, there may be a problem with file system compatibility. In the situation with Time Machine, everything is a little more complicated: although macOS fully supports working with the ExFAT format, the standard backup utility only works with the new APFS or HFS+.

You must use the Time Machine section exclusively. If you don’t want to take up the entire drive with backup copies, then you need to divide it into two or more partitions. One of the partitions should be formatted in HFS+.

Other Disk Utility errors

Some APFS SSD users are experiencing problems. The system refuses to create a partition image for an external hard drive or format this partition. This issue causes many third-party backup applications to no longer work with the partition, giving an error when creating an image.

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Only developers can solve the problem by releasing a patch for their applications. Therefore, you can simply not use APFS for external drives.

Compatibility and hardware issues

Problems with peripheral devices in most cases have hardware roots, and they are related to the functioning of the system interfaces. For example, if the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro does not see the SSD, which is connected via a Thunderbolt/USB adapter. This problem may be a faulty connector on the case or cable. A connector defect may go unnoticed for a long time.

Mechanical problems are not the only source of the problem. The MacBook may not see the SSD that is connected via an adapter due to an incompatible interface standard. This implies:

• Early MacBooks do not support newer storage models and M.2 PCIe.
• Later laptops do not support earlier models of drives, M.2 SATA and mSATA.

The problem is complicated by the fact that adapters and drives for standard devices for M.2 (the most promising standard for Apple owners) can be made in PCIe and SATA versions, which significantly complicates the choice of compatible components. It turns out that if the connector on the drive is compatible with the connector of the adapter used (M.2 has a unified connector), using a different standard will not allow the system to detect the drive.

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The only way to solve this problem is to purchase a drive compatible with your laptop. For MacBook Air and Pro before 2013 and for early MacBook Pro Retina 2012 - 2013, you need to choose drives that support SATA. More modern computers support PCIe-based drives. You can also use an external adapter, which will allow the incompatible drive to be used as portable storage.

High Sierra does not see SSD drive

The High Sierra system has many changes: built-in support for virtual reality programs, a new file storage architecture, and a redesigned “photo” section. The main innovation was support for NMVe technology.

NVM Express is a special specification for access protocols for fast SSD drives that are connected via the PCI Express bus. The name "NVM" stands for non-volatile memory, which uses NAND flash memory.

This logic interface is designed to minimize latency and leverage the high parallelism of SSDs with a new instruction set and queue processing optimized to run on today's multi-core processors. In this situation, PCIe drives with an M.2 (NGFF) connector will be more interesting, since they can be used in modern Apple technology.

The screenshot below shows the advantages of the new technology using the examples of Kingston SHPM2280P2/480G and Samsung 960 EVO MZ-V6E250BW (NVMe) drives. Testing was carried out on a MacBook Pro Retina 13" manufactured in 2015.

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When installing the disk into a laptop, you need to wrap thermal tape around the connection between the adapter and the SSD disk, as in the screenshot below.

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Before physically installing a ready-made disk (adapter, SSD, wrapping with thermal tape), you need to make a bootable USB flash drive with Mac OS High Sierra and install High Sierra on the device. This is done so that all files can be transferred to the new system.

Moving information to a new system with a new SSD drive is done through the Time Capsule. If it is not there, then install a backup on a removable drive and all data can be restored via Time Machine.

After physically installing the disk, we boot from the bootable USB flash drive. You need to launch a terminal, then enter the command diskutil mountDisk disk0. This is done in a situation where there are currently no disks in the device except the new disk.

In another situation, you should register disk1. Then open Disk Utility and expand all the information in the upper left corner using the “View” button. Now select “Show all devices”, after which the unallocated Samsung SSD NVMe drive will be displayed. You need to format it, then install Mac OS High Sierra on it and return the information via Time Machine, Time Capulse, or use a clean system.

In practice, problems occur when waking up from sleep. This can be done in the terminal using the command “sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25”. With this command, sleep data is sent not to memory, but to the SSD.

This command does not affect the speed of exiting or sending to sleep in any way. If the disk is still not detected, then you need to reset the SMC settings.

Tips for using SSD drives on a MacBook

It is important to know about proper system preparation and configuration for SSDs. Let's look at a number of tips that will help you work comfortably with your drive.

Turn on TRIM

SSD drives are prone to clutter, which can lead to poor performance. The problem is solved using TRIM technology. On Macs that come with SSD drives, it is enabled by default.

If you performed the upgrade yourself, you must enable TRIM manually. The Terminal is used for this, but it is safer and easier to use the free Chameleon SSD Optimizer utility.

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In the application, you must unlock access by entering the system password and activate the TRIM switch. Then the laptop will reboot, and you will no longer need the program.

In the utility settings, you can disable hibernation, the Sudden Motion Sensor and set a ban on creating a RAM dump. These features can extend the life of your drive.

Setting up work with NTFS

When working with external drives, users have to deal with the NTFS file system. In OS X, you can read files in NTFS, but you cannot add new ones or change them. It is better to prepare for this in advance so that the Mac does not refuse to function normally with such a drive at the most inopportune moment.

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To prevent an SSD from becoming a garbage dump, it needs to be cleaned regularly. All dubious folders can be deleted manually, but it is better to use specialized applications.

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The DaisyDisk program is suitable for this. If you need quick and advanced cleaning, you can use Clean My Mac 3. Application features:

• Removing system garbage.
• Demonstration of large files.
• Removes unnecessary locations from other programs.
• Cleaning the system of unnecessary add-ons.

Connecting cloud storage

If there is not enough SSD capacity, then cloud storage will come to the rescue. All popular services have a separate client for OS X, where selective synchronization is possible.

Synchronization can be disabled altogether, and data can only be uploaded to a remote server and removed from the device. You can send to the cloud those files that you least need. If necessary, they can always be loaded back.

Downloads folder

This directory most often takes up space on an SSD drive. It is necessary to sort out what you download regularly and put everything in the right places - in the cloud or on external drives. You can also entrust this process to the Automator application.

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We solve the problem of the inability to write files in OS X to storage media formatted in a popular format NTFS.

What is the problem?

There are many devices around us, USB flash drives and external hard drives that use universal file systems FAT32 And NTFS , developed by the company Microsoft. There are no problems with the first one: Mac OS X calmly reads and writes files to drives with a file system FAT32 . However, this system has one very significant limitation: the maximum size of one file cannot exceed 4 gigabytes.

In the age of FULLHD video, such a limitation seems ridiculous. Therefore, most users use the file system NTFS , in which the maximum file size limit is 16 terabytes. Mac OS X can only read information from disks in the format NTFS , but the recording is not available. There are several options for solving the problem, and below I will talk about the most popular ones!

I would like to immediately make a reservation that these methods have been tested on the operating system Mac OS X 10.9.5, but most likely most of them will work on Yosemite.

I use it as an external hard drive Seagate GoFlex Satellite 500GB. It does not have outstanding speed characteristics, but it has a built-in battery and Wi-Fi, which allows it to be used in conjunction with a tablet and smartphone.

Free methods:

1. Enable support using standard OS tools

Yes, this option is possible, but it has several significant disadvantages. First, you will need to be able to work with the command line. Secondly, this method is considered not very reliable, and there is a risk of damaging the file system. If you really want to, a full description of this method can easily be found on Google at the request "enable ntfs recording mac os" . There are a lot of points and nuances, so we will not consider it in this article.

2. Tuxera NTFS-3G

This is a free driver NTFS For MacOS And Linux systems. The developer has already stopped supporting it, but it worked on my system without any problems.

To install, you will need to download the distribution kit of the driver itself, which also includes the MacFUSE kernel, which will allow the driver to work.

– First you need to install MacFUSE.

– The installer will ask you which caching method to use. Choose better "No caching" , because In another mode, driver stability is not guaranteed.

After installation, you will need to restart your computer, after which the icon will appear NTFS-3G. Clicking on it will take you to the driver settings:

There is nothing useful here except the button to turn off the driver and delete it, and it is better not to touch any checkboxes.

After installing the driver, you can connect the hard drive and check the read and write speed. For this I use the utility Blackmagic Disk Speed ​​Test, which is available for download in the App Store.

Results of work free driver:

The read speed is normal for this hard drive, but the write speed is very low. Of course, for many users this performance will be enough. But if you want to get the most out of your hard drive, you will have to pay attention to paid drivers.

Paid methods:

1. Tuxera NTFS for Mac

This is a paid driver from the same developer as NTFS-3G. It is still being supported and improved to this day. You can download it from the developer’s website using the link. It is possible to download and test a 15-day trial version. Next, you will need to buy or remove the driver. The cost is $31, which at the current exchange rate turns into a rather impressive amount in rubles:

There are no special parameters during the installation process. After installation, you also need to restart your computer.

An icon will also appear in the OS settings menu. Tuxera NTFS, which will contain the driver settings.

The read and write speed test results gave excellent results for this hard drive:

2. Paragon NTFS for Mac

A very popular driver. To be honest, before writing this article I had never even encountered any competitors. You can download the driver. The developers give you 10 days to get acquainted with the product. At the same time, the price of the full version of the product looks more interesting compared to its competitor from Tuxera:

The installation also takes place without any unnecessary questions, and the installer itself looks prettier:

There are no special options provided in the driver settings. You can enable/disable the driver:

The results of testing the speed of the hard drive were unexpectedly encouraging! Recording speed comparable to competitor from Tuxera, but the reading speed is consistently 5 megabytes per second higher:

Over the past few years of computer development, each of us has at least once encountered the problem of lack of free disk space: the quality of information, be it photographs, films or programs, is steadily increasing, and with it the amount of disk space required for storage is increasing.

That’s why the iMac’s built-in storage doesn’t look so attractive after a couple of years of use, and we often begin to think about replacing it, because constantly using an external USB drive is unpleasant, it spoils the whole impression of working on the iMac, and setting up network storage is also unprofitable - even though they stability is now much higher, but many programs still cannot fully work with “remote disks”.

However, what should you do if, after replacing the storage, the iMac does not see the new HDD? Let's take it in order.

After installing a new hard drive on your iMac, Disk Utility will automatically prompt you to format the drive (if the utility is not open, you may not see messages about the connected drive, just like in Windows). By default, Mac OS works with the main file system formats, including HFS+, FAT32, ExFAT and NTFS. Native to Mac OS is HFS+ (Mac Os Extended), as it allows you to use a hard drive of almost unlimited capacity and store the corresponding files on it. Using FAT32 is also possible, but in this case the maximum hard drive size will be limited to two terabytes, and the maximum file size to four gigabytes. ExFAT, in turn, has no such restrictions. NTFS is the standard system for Windows, but Mac OS is read-only when working with this standard.

If the computer does not see the new HDD, you should start the iMac in recovery mode and select Disk Utility (an Internet connection will be required). To do this, you need to boot the iMac while holding down the Command + R keys. If Disk Utility recognizes the installed HDD, you should format it yourself to a supported standard. The optimal choice would be one of two formats:

• HFS+ for use exclusively in the Mac OS environment and for creating backup copies (Time Machine supports only this format).
• ExFAT for use in conjunction with the Windows operating system (for exchanging files of any size).

After this, without leaving recovery mode, you can install Mac OS or restore the system to a new hard drive.

If the iMac does not see the new HDD connected via an external cable, the problem may also be with the format. In most cases, problems arise with hard drives larger than 2 TB, as a result of which the system can only recognize two or less terabytes (in some cases even less than one terabyte). In this case, the problem is the standard Windows GPT partition installed on the disk. You can also change the partition type through Disk Utility.

In addition to software problems with standards, there may be hardware incompatibility and damage to board components or the disk itself. If after formatting the computer still does not see the new HDD, the iMac should be sent to a service center.