[HELP] Can't get Clover read my SSD

[daks39]

Hi all! I am trying to install macOS Mojave on SSD. I had hackintosh with High Sierra before but sometimes I had issues opening clover on boot (the same problem as now I think). The problem is that my clover bootloader can't read my previously APFS partitioned SSD. I have tried many times with different drivers (different versions of apfs.efi and apfs-64.efi, ApfsDriverLoader.efi and ApfsDriverLoader-64.efi and other) but I can't manage clover to read my SSD.. I can boot the USB installer of Mojave but when I need to erase my drive in order to make a clean install, I just can't see my drive with disk utility and I can't move on.. A day before, without ANY different clover settings, it managed to read apfs drive and when I was at the stage of diskutility erase I formatted it to APFS without knowing what I am going to face.. I also connected the SSD with eSATA to an old hackintosh laptop (Yosemite 10.10)
in order to erase the SSD APFS with terminal and convert it back to HFS and although it "succeed" to remove only the APFS partition, not the whole disk, I still can't see the SSD on clover boot.. What I want now is just to erase the whole SSD to free space so I can move on.. When I have the SSD plugged in computer, boot takes very long time and when it reaches clover no other drive than USB installer is shown. But when the SSD is unplugged, the clover starts immediately..
I also tried to CMOS reset but nothing changed. Without the apfs.efi or ApfsDriverLoader.efi the clover starts immediately but I can't see the disk, and when I try to boot with them it's hanging and when it finally boots I have the same result.. Although bios recognizes the disk normally.. Do you have any idea what to do and how to continue? It's an infinite loop right now.. Thanks in advance!


System specifications:
Msi z370 Pro Carbon AC
Intel i5 8400
Asus Nvidia Geforce GTX1060 6gb

 

[jpz4085]

Hi @daks39 make sure you fill out your profile/signature info as described in the forum rules.

How are you attaching this SSD? Internal or external? Have you tried connecting it to different ports on your motherboard?

 

[cmn699]

Hi all! I am trying to install macOS Mojave on SSD. I had hackintosh with High Sierra before but sometimes I had issues opening clover on boot (the same problem as now I think). The problem is that my clover bootloader can't read my previously APFS partitioned SSD. I have tried many times with different drivers (different versions of apfs.efi and apfs-64.efi, ApfsDriverLoader.efi and ApfsDriverLoader-64.efi and other) but I can't manage clover to read my SSD.. I can boot the USB installer of Mojave but when I need to erase my drive in order to make a clean install, I just can't see my drive with disk utility and I can't move on.. A day before, without ANY different clover settings, it managed to read apfs drive and when I was at the stage of diskutility erase I formatted it to APFS without knowing what I am going to face.. I also connected the SSD with eSATA to an old hackintosh laptop (Yosemite 10.10)
in order to erase the SSD APFS with terminal and convert it back to HFS and although it "succeed" to remove only the APFS partition, not the whole disk, I still can't see the SSD on clover boot.. What I want now is just to erase the whole SSD to free space so I can move on.. When I have the SSD plugged in computer, boot takes very long time and when it reaches clover no other drive than USB installer is shown. But when the SSD is unplugged, the clover starts immediately..
I also tried to CMOS reset but nothing changed. Without the apfs.efi or ApfsDriverLoader.efi the clover starts immediately but I can't see the disk, and when I try to boot with them it's hanging and when it finally boots I have the same result.. Although bios recognizes the disk normally.. Do you have any idea what to do and how to continue? It's an infinite loop right now.. Thanks in advance!


System specifications:
Msi z370 Pro Carbon AC
Intel i5 8400
Asus Nvidia Geforce GTX1060 6gb

• Since this might take several threads back and forth , please add your Hardware Specs listed in the message to Build Signature so that they can be accessed from all the threads .
• Your Asus Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 6GB is NOT supported in Mojave. Hope is fading for Nvidia releasing any Web driver for its use in Mojave.
  • It is better to Remove Asus Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 6GB from PCIE to make installation easier.
• The first step in a "Missing disk in DU" in macOSUtilities screen and/or terminal diskutil list command, is to check the BIOS to confirm if BIOS detects it.
• If BIOS cannot see that , start hardware troubleshoot with
• SATA DATA cable, SATA Power Cable
  • removal and reinsertion,
  • trial of a different cable,
• switching SATA Ports, and
• finally considering the possibility of a damaged disk.

Edited to add:

If the Target hard disk is a no show at Disk Utility screen during installation try clicking View .[√] Show All Devices

Select the Disk and Not the Volume to erase.

If the above fails:
Choose Utilities>Terminal from Menubar

on Terminal run the command:
diskutil list
From the output locate your target hardisk's Identifier Number [example disk0]
Next run Partition and Format command for Mojave like:

diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk0 GPT APFS+ Mojave10.14.3 0b

If you cannot find your target disk in diskutil list command output, BIOS would not have shown the disk

In that case Open the computer case and check cables and ports to the disk and try different cables and different ports first and finally consider Damaged disk.

 

[lukakeiton]

Boot from USB. Make a backup from your EFI folder in SSD. Then, copy the EFI folder in the USB to the EFI folder in the SSD. Once you can boot, configure your config.plist

Sorry, I have missunderstood you.

Which version of clover do you have? There is a minimum version to make apfs.efi works.

 

[daks39]

Hi all and thanks for your interest! My SSD is internal attached with SATA cable. What I have done so far is:

• I have tried different cables and different motherboard ports but nothing changed. Although BIOS recognises my SSD, the whole computer slows down and lags very much, for example opening BIOS Board Explorer takes up to 2 min, and with the "problematic" SSD unplugged it opens immediately. In general, with the SSD plugged in the PC becomes unusable.
• I connected the SSD to a laptop as main disk and tried to do format with a Windows CD installer. When I reached the stage of disk format, the installer couldn't see the disk at all. It was like no SSD was connected.
• When I connect my SSD to the old laptop Yosemite hackintosh with eSATA and run

  diskutil list

  the SSD seems normal but when I try to format it with terminal or Disk Utility, it gives errors. One error of them was unmount problem, but when I tried to force unmount it to move foward, it couldn't succeed and the disk suddenly disappeared from diskutil list. Also, with SSD eSATA connection, it randomly disconnects from the old hackintosh without doing anything. The reason you don't see APFS in partition type and instead of that you see Apple_HFS, is that although it took very very long, I succeed to run

  diskutil eraseVolume JHFS+ empty /dev/disk1s2

  . But I still can't see it as a HFS partition in clover and when I try to access the "empty" partition in Finder the SSD just force ejects alone.
• 
  
• I tried to boot from the internal EFI and the PC just restarts infinitely..
• 
  

• If the Target hard disk is a no show at Disk Utility screen during installation try clicking View .[√] Show All Devices
  
  Select the Disk and Not the Volume to erase.
  
  If the above fails:
  Choose Utilities>Terminal from Menubar
  
  on Terminal run the command:
  diskutil list
  From the output locate your target hardisk's Identifier Number [example disk0]
  Next run Partition and Format command for Mojave like:
  
  diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk0 GPT APFS+ Mojave10.14.3 0b
  
  If you cannot find your target disk in diskutil list command output, BIOS would not have shown the disk
  
  In that case Open the computer case and check cables and ports to the disk and try different cables and different ports first and finally consider Damaged disk.

  About this you said, although I can see the SSD in BIOS (but with many problems as I described before) I can't see the SSD drive neither in Disk Utility, nor in diskutil list also with Show All Devices checked. So I can't run

  diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk0 GPT APFS+ Mojave10.14.3 0b

  .

• Which version of clover do you have? There is a minimum version to make apfs.efi works.

  I have tried many clover versions, including some of the newer ones.. Also in past with the same Clover EFI USB I could read the APFS drives, so this is not the problem.

What I think so far is that my SSD is destroyed. I don't know if the APFS format attempt was the reason, but I think replace with a new one is the only solution. What do you think?

 

[jpz4085]

What I think so far is that my SSD is destroyed. I don't know if the APFS format attempt was the reason, but I think replace with a new one is the only solution. What do you think?

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. If your machine's firmware can hardly read it that's probably a good indicator it's dead. How old is this SSD? Has it seen a lot of usage? Sounds like it might just be reaching it's end of life.

 

[cmn699]

Hi all and thanks for your interest! My SSD is internal attached with SATA cable. What I have done so far is:

• I have tried different cables and different motherboard ports but nothing changed. Although BIOS recognises my SSD, the whole computer slows down and lags very much, for example opening BIOS Board Explorer takes up to 2 min, and with the "problematic" SSD unplugged it opens immediately. In general, with the SSD plugged in the PC becomes unusable.
• I connected the SSD to a laptop as main disk and tried to do format with a Windows CD installer. When I reached the stage of disk format, the installer couldn't see the disk at all. It was like no SSD was connected.
• When I connect my SSD to the old laptop Yosemite hackintosh with eSATA and run

  diskutil list

  the SSD seems normal but when I try to format it with terminal or Disk Utility, it gives errors. One error of them was unmount problem, but when I tried to force unmount it to move foward, it couldn't succeed and the disk suddenly disappeared from diskutil list. Also, with SSD eSATA connection, it randomly disconnects from the old hackintosh without doing anything. The reason you don't see APFS in partition type and instead of that you see Apple_HFS, is that although it took very very long, I succeed to run

  diskutil eraseVolume JHFS+ empty /dev/disk1s2

  . But I still can't see it as a HFS partition in clover and when I try to access the "empty" partition in Finder the SSD just force ejects alone.
• View attachment 393031
  
• I tried to boot from the internal EFI and the PC just restarts infinitely..
• View attachment 393032
  
• About this you said, although I can see the SSD in BIOS (but with many problems as I described before) I can't see the SSD drive neither in Disk Utility, nor in diskutil list also with Show All Devices checked. So I can't run

  diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk0 GPT APFS+ Mojave10.14.3 0b

  .
• 
  I have tried many clover versions, including some of the newer ones.. Also in past with the same Clover EFI USB I could read the APFS drives, so this is not the problem.

What I think so far is that my SSD is destroyed. I don't know if the APFS format attempt was the reason, but I think replace with a new one is the only solution. What do you think?

• If "diskutil list" command cannot detect, enumerate, and provide an Identifier to the disk, you cannot install macOS on that.
• Frankly, I am surprised you could find it in the BIOS.
  • How could the Motherboard Firmware Initialize a defective Disk is puzzling me.
  • In fact a damaged disk is often a cause for "Failure to POST", "No Display on Power ON" or a "Frozen Motherboard Splash screen".
• The fact that when this SSD is connected to the MoBo, it 'slows down ' the entire System as you stated in your post, is a definite sign of serious electrical problem within the Disk aka 'moribund' if not, an already 'Dead Disk'.
  • I am sorry for your loss.
• But, your post will help others to learn about "Missing Disk in DU" and the troubleshoot steps to differentiate various causes and reach a final diagnosis.

 

[CaseySJ]

@daks39

Because you are using one of the 6 SATA ports on your motherboard, please check the table below from Page 34 of the user manual. Some SATA ports are not usable if you have NVMe SSD in either the M2_1 or M2_2 slot. If both NVMe slots are empty, then all 6 SATA ports are usable.

Also note that some people had poor-quality SATA data cables. So if you have another SATA data cable, try using that. Also try another SATA power cable.

If all these suggestions fail, then it may be time to consider replacing the SSD.