
To erase and format the Crucial startup SSD, shut down your Mac in the usual manner. All it does is to erase unused blocks, which literally cannot be performed on an SSD and should not even be attempted. "Secure Erase" is not a low level format and it's not worth pursuing or discussing. That short explanation describes the crux of your difficulties. It does not rely upon the replacement Crucial SSD, which needs to be erased and formatted as Mac OS Extended- not APFS-which won't work until you download and apply the High Sierra upgrade, and will perform that conversion automatically. The ability to do that is incorporated in that MacBook Pro's firmware. Nevertheless, it seems you need to create that environment so that it can be upgraded to High Sierra and generally configured for your own use. When you first received your Mac, were you greeted with the "new user setup" procedure? That should have happened.

This slight security concern is probably the only thing even remotely wrong with this app.Thanks. This drive factory reset app is very close to perfection, but they should show people the coding so that professional users can check it for anything untoward. A look at the code would make this a flawless tool Be sure you fully understand what you are doing before choosing your settings on this tool. Though this seems like a simple hard drive formatting tool, it has surprisingly advanced settings that will suit computer scientists and IT professionals. Or, it can do harder erases where existing data is copied over so that it may never be retrieved. It has a quick format that reinstalls whatever files are needed for the USB drive to work. It can replace your bad sectors with redundant sectors.

On the other hand, the tool can format over some of your more stubborn malware files. You can choose softer and harder formatting options, but there's no guarantee a forensic or file restoring program would turn up your old files that were there prior to the formatting.
