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The March 2015 update of Apple's 13" MacBook Air features fifth generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, resulting in slightly increased performance and battery life.

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MacBook Air Disk Utility not recognizing replacement SSD

I have recently received an MBA 13” e2015 with a bad options board and no SSD or HDD. The previous tech could not find the problem with the options board so they removed the original SSD to recover data from it, but never replaced or returned the original drive.

I have purchased an Aura Pro X2 SSD to install but am running into problems.

After installing the SSD in the empty SSD slot and, boot the machine up while holding the options button > online recovery > Disk recovery option > Disk Utility, the disk utility is unable to recognize anything but the 2GB internal memory.

I have already tried unseating and reseating the SSD and making sure it is pushed into the socket firmly, with no change in results.

I have read the might be an OS problem with the machine not previously operating on High Sierra 10.13, but not having the original drive, I’m not aware of what OS was previously running.

At this point, there is a lot I could do to troubleshoot the issue but before going out and buying tools I don’t need I wanted to see if anyone knew of a fix.

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I'm a bit lost in your description. The MacBook Air systems use a blade SSD (PCIe 2.0 x2) there is no HDD. The OWC Aura Pro X2 should be fine.

What is the “Option Board” are you talking about? The MacBook Air 13" (Mid 2013-2017) I/O Board so I'm not sure why thats in the dialog here. It maybe you have issues with it as well but thats not going to effect the SSD drive.

Here’s the iFixit guide to gain access to the SSD in this system MacBook Air 13" Early 2015 SSD Replacement

Your next statement on using Disk Utility has me scratching my head “Disk Utility, the disk utility is unable to recognize anything but the 2GB internal memory.” Disk Utility can’t see RAM are you looking at the virtual disk in RAM the installer is using? If you can’t see the drive then either the SSD is not properly seated or its possibly bad. Or the OWC Aura Pro X2 may need a firmware update.

But, I’m thinking you maybe booted up in the wrong OS which is messing you up. Let’s try this again this time let’s press the Command (⌘) and R keys that way you get to what the system had before.

Reference: How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery

Are you able to get to disk utility under it and can now see the drive? If not lets get a snapshot so I can see what you have Adding images to an existing question

MacBook Air 13" (Mid 2013-2017) I/O Board Image

Product

MacBook Air 13" (Mid 2013-2017) I/O Board

$79.99

iFixit Image

Guide

Adding images to an existing question

Difficulty:

Very easy

—

2 - 5 minutes
MacBook Air 13" Early 2015 SSD Image

Guide

MacBook Air 13" Early 2015 SSD Replacement

Difficulty:

Moderate

—

10 - 25 minutes

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I'd like to join to this topic. I have the same issue. Recently I've bought 512GB SSD replacement for Mac Book Air A1466. I bought it because oryginal 128GB SSD capacity is far not enough for me. Unfortunatelly Mac was unable to recognize the device and I returned it to the seller, Then I've bought another one from other place, marked as being from oryginal Mac Book Air. This item also remained undetected by Apple Mac Book Disk Utility. Yes, I ticked "show ALL devides" option from View menu.

Finally I was forced to return to my oryginal 128GB too small SSD.

Any ideas?

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@zilog - In your case I think you’re hitting either the shoe cobbler’s dilemma or you are using the wrong macOS to setup your system which if you run the internet recovery is a common issue as you do need High Sierra or newer to gain the PCI drivers within the firmware and OS update.


To overcome the cobblers dilemma you really need to setup a bootable OS installer.

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