Below is a step-by-step guide made by Crucial for installing a 2.5-inch SSD in a Mac laptop or iMac / Mac Pro system.
Note, before installing your SSD, it must be initialised, partitioned, and formatted. You can do this by connecting it to your computer with a cloning cable, then follow these steps (applicable to MacOS El Capitan or newer (version 10.11 or higher)).
How to Format your SSD
- Press command and space to open spotlight, then start typing Disk Utility, then choose the Disk Utility app.
- Once Disk Utility is open, you will see a message telling you that the SSD cannot be read by the computer.
- Click on the Initialise button that appears in the message and your SSD will be visible in Disk Utility.
- Highlight your SSD and click the Erase button.
- Type in a name for the new partition (this where you’ll save data on the drive and it’ll be the name for your SSD).
- On the menu settings, verify that the partition is set to GUID Partition Table.
- Verify that the selected format defaults to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
- Select Erase. The drive will now be partitioned, formatted, and ready for use.