- a 16GB+ USB flash drive
- iFixit instructions for MBP 13" Early 2015 SSD replacement
- hardware (Mac-specific screwdrivers, spudger, etc)
- Your SSD (in our case PCIe 3.1 x4 NVMe M.2 2280-S3-M SSD) - 480GB; 3.4GB/s max read and 3.1GB/s max write
- Your OSX image - we chose Mojave
It'll look something like this:
dataJancBookPro:~ datajanitor$ sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/empty --nointeraction && say Mojave Drive Created
Erasing disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 100%
Copying to disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%... 40%... 50%... 60%...
Of course you can always cross your fingers and hope that the Internet Recovery option works to install a fresh copy of OS X but let's plan for failure and make a bootable USB with the OS... Let's not count on the Internet Recovery installation as something that works 1oo% of the time.