New 1Tb SSD not recognized in MacBook

I purchased a new 1Tb Aura Pro X2 SSD from ifixit. After opening the package, the documentation warns me that MacOS High Sierra 10.13 must be installed before installing this SSD. Apparently there is an EFI update needed for it to recognize the drive. I had no way of checking or verifying that the latest version OS was installed, so just installed it and hoped it worked. It doesn’t. I don’t have a working drive for this MacBook Pro. So no way to install latest version. Booted with cmd-R to recover OS from the internet. Apple Genius told me that this would update the EFI. But the disk utility only sees a 2GB drive. My 1Tb drive is not visible. Is this a faulty drive? Or am I missing something?