Installing external SSD on Mac

[#1]

I bought a 500GB M.2 SSD to use on my Mac to store my VM Images and along with the disk I bought an M.2 USB 3.1 enclosure to hold it.

However, I can’t see the disk on my Mac. When I look at System Info it recognises the enclosure but not the device in it.

Nor does it appear when using diskutils

iMac:~ Mook$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         500.0 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +500.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            216.4 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 43.9 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                509.7 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

so doesn’t show up in the GUI version either.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this at all, is this disk duff?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

It looks like the caddy only supports NVMe SSDs, but you bought a SATA SSD, so they are not compatible.

[#3]

OK I think I now have an answer to this and it is simply down to the fact that the enclosure does not recognise the device. On looking at the specs for it, it makes no reference to the suitability of the MX500 but does suggest two others that support the MX500.

So I’ve arranged for the return of the enclosure and ordered one of these but won’t get it till Monday, so much for Prime!

P.S. I’m not taking the blame for this, I bought this enclosure as it was in a ‘Frequently bought together’  when I viewed the disk.

Rather than take the fix myself I'll give it to @ejs as his post arrived seconds before mine.

[#4]

If it were me I'd keep the caddy and pay extra for a NVMe M2 drive. Much faster!

[#5]

Well my replacement enclosure arrived yesterday so I installed it and moved the 126GB of Virtual Machines on to it. Even though this this isn’t the fastest option available, but is for my Mac, I can’t tell any difference when using them, so I’m more than pleased.