65 ms·

Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed

451 points by concinds 5y ago

Coragerard 5y ago
Yeah, I am familiar with all that ASR thing. But people are still not sure if it is perfect or not. It proved to be not as robust as it should be.
- Isaackane 5y ago
  You are right. It's useful, but up to some extent. We've used ASR to perform tens of thousands of its clones and it was not up to the mark. At many points, ASR fails simply with no obvious reasons and explanations. I could not figure out what's actual data is important to back up and what not.
Remiluke 5y ago
It was so easy before for Mac users to drag and drop data and use it for external boot. Then Apple Mac OS X made it more complicated. And now the new Apple Silicon Macs have made it too hard for the user to recover from hardware failure. Through this article, I have got my concerns addressed and now the solution is here. Thumbs up for the info.
- Isaackane 5y ago
  Yeah the Big Sur has brought a big change by introducing some significant new changes by residing its OS on a cryptographically sealed "Signed System Volume”. Only an Apple-proprietary utility, "Apple Software Restore" (ASR) can copy it and that’s incredible though.
baggy_trough 5y ago
I never cared about bootable backups. What is more of a concern is getting data off a non-bootable Mac that has a viable drive, since Apple often replaces the drive as part of servicing.
- xuki 5y ago
  The SSD on all new Macs is soldered into the board. If a single component on the board breaks, they replace the whole thing.
- 323 5y ago
  Isn't the drive encrypted anyway, with the key in T2?
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Yes. The only real solution is to backup regularly. (And, if you travel, it probably makes sense to regularly copy any critical work in process to an SD card.)
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      Not backing up regularly is eventual (potentially massive) data loss even with a machine that doesn't have the limitations mentioned in the linked page. It may not be as common but SSD controllers for example can and do fail sometimes, and in that situation no amount of flexibility on the host computer's part is going to save you.
concinds 5y ago
Article is from May but received no attention, and I believe most people are unaware of this; the Mac needs an iBoot on the internal drive in order to boot from any volume, and thus cannot boot from an external drive if the internal one has failed.
- NKosmatos 5y ago
  Once again Apple is showing how to do things stupidly. They won't allow you to boot from an external HDD/SSD if the internal one fails. On top of that they make it extremely difficult to replace the internal disk on your own. Carbon Copy Cloner has been my number one program all these years, but I think that Apple is pushing us loyal and technical competent people away. They just want "simple" users.
  - im_down_w_otp 5y ago
    They want you to take the device to the dealership.
    - nyxaiur 5y ago
      The SSDs of 2015-2017 macbooks start failing and they are soldered on the board. I have a 12" that I can only boot from external now otherwise the device would be dead. With the M1 models you don't even have the chance to do this. Apple won't even change the failed ssds they will sell you a new logic board for the prize of a new machine. It's infuriating and the only reason I won't buy a machine until they make user replaceable storage the norm again.
      - aluminussoma 5y ago
        I suspect they began soldering it because the cable connecting the disk drive had a lot of problems in older MacBooks. Soldering may have been an easy fix for that. I hate the soldering, too. I'm just offering an explanation that may make some sense given the context.
api 5y ago
Sounds like something a software update could fix. Probably a scenario that was never tested.
- nrclark 5y ago
  Maybe or maybe not. It depends a lot on how the chip's boot ROM is designed.
- ketralnis 5y ago
  Intending to support it but never testing it would be a surprise. If I were designing laptop hardware I'd probably spend a lot of time booting it from external media as part of the design process. It would accidentally be the most tested feature of the hardware aside from maybe turning it on.
- 323 5y ago
  You assume it's a bug and not as designed.
  - api 5y ago
    If they didn't want people running their own stuff on it, they would have locked it down like an iPad. The fact that they didn't means they wanted it to be possible.
TimTheTinker 5y ago
I'd be curious what Marcan (Asahi Linux founder/hacker) would have to say about this. Perhaps there's a workaround?
- garaetjjte 5y ago
  >In fact, they do not support external boot disks at all, by design. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26114417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26114417
- NobodyNada 5y ago
  He’s talked about this quite extensively in the past. Here’s a link to the Asahi project docs: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot > iBoot is the main bootloader on M1 machines. It is small. It cannot understand external storage. It does not support USB. It does not have a UI. All it can do is boot from internal storage, and show an Apple logo, a progress bar, and a few error messages. IIRC he’s said before that iBoot doesn’t even have keyboard support; it can tell if you’re holding down the power button to enter recovery mode, but that’s it. There is no workaround for this; it is not possible to boot over USB if the bootloader does not speak USB.
gameswithgo 5y ago
Consider options like Framework laptops that let you actually own your hardware, and repair it.
- Milner08 5y ago
  If only they were available in the UK
  - darrenf 5y ago
    I'm in the UK too, finding myself unwilling to pay the new Mac prices and getting impatient for the framework. So, recently I've been considering a StarBook Mk V from https://starlabs.systems/ https://starlabs.systems/ They publish a full disassembly guide[0], so I'm reasonably sure the whole thing is repairable and upgradable if necessary. Lots of options for custom build at order time including coreboot. I'm a bit hesitant about a 1920x1080 display but otherwise extremely tempted. [0] https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/guides/starbook-mk-v-complete-disassembly-guide https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/guides/starbook-mk-v-com...
    - GordonS 5y ago
      I hadn't come across this laptop before, thanks for sharing! It looks almost perfect, but only having a single USB-C port is a disappointing choice :(
  - fsflover 5y ago
    Perhaps you can consider this one instead: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 https://puri.sm/products/librem-14.
- arbuge 5y ago
  Any PC will let you boot from an external drive if the internal drive fails (or even if it doesn't).
- yumraj 5y ago
  I for one will, if they were to make a 15" :)
niklasrde 5y ago
Does that apply to PXE or the Mac equivalent? I wonder how they will run their diagnistics in the Apple Store if they can't boot their diagnostics tool.
- olyjohn 5y ago
  Throw it away and give you a new one?
- xxpor 5y ago
  If they're loading the EFI image off of the SSD, it'd affect that too (unless there's PXE in the bootstrap code, but I seriously doubt it)
keymone 5y ago
i get that their business is at risk, but i've literally never had a macbook disk fail on me in 12 years of dealing with half a dozen laptops (oldest one still in use today). this will get way more attention than it deserves.
- VortexDream 5y ago
  Not sure how this is relevant in any way. I've seen dozens of MacBooks where the hard drive had failed. Not to say that they fail any more than other laptops, but unless Apple has come up with some magical technology that makes their hard drives never fail, this is a terrible, terrible change. Water is wet, the moon circles the earth and hard drives fail (eventually, some sooner than others).
  - asddubs 5y ago
    are you talking about actual hard drives or ssds though?
    - VortexDream 5y ago
      Both. SSDs also fail (yes, it's true). I'm not sure why people seem to think they last forever or that they never fail. They do not last forever. They do fail.
- TillE 5y ago
  I've had two sudden, total failures of my 2012 Macbook Air drive: once in warranty where it got replaced, once out of warranty. I have indeed been using a USB3 external SSD drive for the OS ever since. Inconvenient, but it works quite well.
rvz 5y ago
Unsurprising. Given the countless times I have warned about the risks of going 'all in' on an Apple Silicon Mac and now they realise. Good luck with your files if the internal hard drive is dead. Consider creating regular backups otherwise your can say goodbye to your files. No thanks and absolutely no deal to that.
- SamuelAdams 5y ago
  How is this any different than any other computer? If a hard drive fails, recovering data is either impossible or very expensive. Everyone who uses a computer ought to have some sort of backup, either another drive, cloud service, etc.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Yes, if you have anything of even moderate importance on a computer, not backing up is foolish and will eventually result in loss of data. If plugging in an external drive and letting something like Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner run from time to time is too much trouble there's even options like Backblaze which makes automated incremental backups entirely transparent and effortless. There's no good reason to not backup.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Surely everyone on HN does regular backups of some kind? Most of us probably have two or three different kinds of backups, if I'm to believe what I read here (e.g. I have everything I care about on cloud storage, also backed up by Time Machine, and backed up by Backblaze). If my MBP fails, I'll walk into the Apple Store and swap for a new one, hook up my TM backup and be back working in an hour or so. I've always, always assumed that the internal drive can fail at any moment and take every last byte of data with it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Twisell 5y ago
  I can't see any scenario on any hardware in which I would not strongly advise to make regular backups. Beside theses laptop are designed to be used (if configured so) with full disk encryption using a strong key stored inside a secure enclave on the cpu. If something is amiss the data is lost, they could almost say it's a feature (but they probably won't as is would be seen as a bug by the majority of people hence this thread).
liminalsunset 5y ago
General grumpiness about this particular design decision aside, it appears that since the T2 Macs, the main SSD was being used to store core system firmware. On T2 I think it's BridgeOS that sends the EFI image to the Intel side to boot it, and it does the firmware verification and loading. This setup has a benefit; namely, it is now impossible to brick the system with a bad BIOS/EFI flash, and you'll never need to use a hardware SPI flasher to recover. Just like the iPhone, you can enter Boot ROM DFU mode, which can't easily be overwritten, and restore all of the firmware on the system that's writable. This is great for restoring systems to a known good firmware state, including SSD, EFI, BridgeOS, RecoveryOS. On a normal system, there is plenty of non volatile storage that is difficult to recover or reset. The primary argument against soldering the SSD, or really any other part, down like this tends to be that "Oh, now you can't just save money by upgrading it yourself|replacing it when it breaks". On the other side, these machines are engineered as appliances that should achieve a certain degree of reliability. The SSD is reasonably considered to last the "lifetime" of the product, and should it fail, I don't consider the inability to externally boot to be a huge problem, since whatever failure damaged the SSD is statistically likely to compromise the reliability of the rest of the board. Any failure is grounds for "rework" of the board on a hardware level if necessary,up to and including repair/replacement of the onboard flash, and not just a simple workaround in my opinion. Note that they don't force you to actually USE the internal SSD - you can still netboot or USB boot I think. It just has to work. Trivia: -At least on T2 systems, the flash memory itself (the NAND chips) on the mainboard can actually be swapped between units after a DFU restore by unsoldering them and transferring them. The person that did this on YouTube notes that a common reason for SSD failure on T2 machines is due to SSD power regulator circuitry being located close to the intake vents on the side of the MacBook Pro. They recommend that users of these machines open them and clean the dust out often, since dust buildup on the actual power regulator combined with moisture sometimes causes a short circuit, sending high voltage to the SSD and damaging it. This kind of failure (high voltage parts close to low voltage ones, close to liquid damage prone areas, without any underfilling) is documented by Louis Rossmann. It is, however, not always feasible or possible to entirely prevent.
- bogantech 5y ago
  > This setup has a benefit; namely, it is now impossible to brick the system with a bad BIOS/EFI flash, and you'll never need to use a hardware SPI flasher to recover. T2 could have been designed to store / recover the rom in an SPI flash too. It's just cheaper to store it on the SSD
DemiGuru 5y ago
This is old information and no longer the case - https://shirtpocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html https://shirtpocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.htm...
- tyingq 5y ago
  Though who knows what types of experimentation, trial and error SuperDuper went through to make it work.
  - DemiGuru 5y ago
    I know that David Nanian and co worked with Apple to address the issue(s) that prevented them from providing a bootable backup.
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      The ability to create bootable backups on external drives as you describe, does not necessarily conflict with the inability to boot from external drives as the post link describes.
- concinds 5y ago
  I'm not sure your link disproves this article. The first paragraph just says bootable backups are supported (they are by CCC too), and the rest of the page hasn't been changed in years. The SuperDuper blog says: > Note that, as I indicated above, M1 Macs can't readily boot from external drives. There are things you can do, if you have an external Thunderbolt 3 drive (USB-C isn't sufficient), but even that won't work if the internal drive is dead. Unless things change, bootable backups are basically a thing of the past on M1-based Macs. [0] in a January article, and I haven't seen anything that contradicts it in more recent articles. Mind linking? (Note that booting from USB-C is now supported on AS Macs, but booting when the internal drive is dead is not) [0]: https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/comments/thats_big_sir_to_you/ https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/commen...
  - 5y ago
yumraj 5y ago
So, in other words, it is actually possible to brick an Apple Silicon Mac computer. Cool!!
mlindner 5y ago
This title is misleading. Apple Silicon Macs can boot from external hard drives just fine. The topic is only about if the drive is failed.
- fishtacos 5y ago
  Title: "Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed"
xondono 5y ago
I get that for people from IT it sounds surprising, but from a hardware perspective I would say it’s a good change. Instead of having a SPI flash memory with the firmware they’ve gone ahead and merged that into a single flash memory. It’s weird because we are used to see disks as independent modules, but for these devices that’s simply a useless distinction, something that we keep for legacy reasons, not because it provides any meaningful advantage.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Being able to swap disks is a meaningful advantage. After all, it's the part most likely to fail first, and often first limitation people hit on a machine. Storage tech is still advancing at a decent clip. In 5 years, there will probably be 4-6TB drives on the market with 2-4x the throughput for the same price as 1TB drives today.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    We keep on hearing about folks needing to swap out disks out that are broken who ALSO don't have apple care AND are out of warranty? I mean, how many people is this vs the millions / billions of idevices out there? Apple simplifies / integrates like crazy - that is a focus for them. No separate bios flash - my guess is others start copying them personally. Because apple products hold value so well, I just sell me 2 year old stuff and it can really knock down cost of the new stuff.
    - kuschku 5y ago
      And the people buying your used devices have no apple care and are out of warranty, so they’ll complain if they can’t repair it. Apple devices will stop holding value so well the less repairable they get, which in turn will also increase your costs.
      - slownews45 5y ago
        The "unrepairable" apple devices have far FAR higher resale value and lifetimes than most the Huawei / OPPO / etc used phones out there. This is really the proof point. This is a combination of apples total system engineering and software update story. You don't need applecare to get updtes on an iphone. For example, looking at recently sold items on Ebay - Iphone 5S 32GB is going for $100. That's an 8 year old phone. Take your 8 year old HTC - nothing close to that.
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
Itt: more corporate sycophants a who have reasons for Apple to deny right to repair to their customers The majority of you work at publicly traded companies and it shows.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Brainwashed propagandists are everywhere. Watch out for them and you may be able to find the truth and the agenda.
aneutron 5y ago
I get that the memory bandwidth and performance of the SoC is intimately tied to the CPU, GPU and memory being on the same silicon (grossly vulgarizing the approach). However, there is no reasonable justification (as far as I can tell) for why the SSD would have to be soldered onto the same SoC, and even less reasonable justification for why the iBoot stuff couldn't be located on an EEPROM or something of the sort, like a secondary BIOS/UEFI. It just boggles my mind why Apple would go so far to limit storage options and even make a straight up bad architectural decision (SSD gone ? You can't boot the 4k€ machine. What ? You bought it 4 years ago ? Well, tough luck.)
- slownews45 5y ago
  Does anyone laugh a bit at these types of comments? Using these "stupid" and "unjustifiable" approaches, apple has delivered highly reliable / fast machines to lots of users. They come with applecare if you want, which gets you walk in fix/replace at their stores. Note, they've already don't this on iphones - millions shipped. They are going for as much reliability / speed out of this for the 90%+ of users who are not going in to manually swap out SSDs. They are also huge on part simplification, they probably got rid of the bios flash and are just using the SSD flash. My own predication, as in many other areas others will COPY this "stupid" design - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. My guess is others will also stop shipping another set of chargers with everything (again copying apple). They now also sell indefinite applecare, by getting normal breakage down low enough you can keep apple care as long as you want if you keep paying.
  - jackorange 5y ago
    Maybe others will also take after apple selling $99 stands and $7 small microfiber cloths.
  - aneutron 5y ago
    You are arguing without any arguments. 1) I agree that some integration is intimately tied to how well the machines performs. I also referenced this in my comment. What I don't agree to is the SSD being soldered on. It uses the same PCIe lanes it would use if it was swappable ! As for the "stupid" approach, it really doesn't make much sense to tie the capability of the machine FUNCTIONING to a storage that you cannot change (and that is bound to break eventually from wear & tear, because it's an SSD). 2) The iPhone are a different story. It's a different requirement all together. You have to fit EVERYTHING in a couple of mm2 of surface. That's a very tough requirement, and everyone understands that you can't have the ability of swapping an SSD and having the portability that the iPhone offers at the same time. The same is simply not true for a professional laptop. 3) I sincerely don't see how an iBoot-inspired design would replace UEFI anytime soon. The latter is more powerful as far as I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong). 4) The "support" plan you're describing is in my eyes extortion. If I can buy an SSD for 100€ on Amazon, and replace it down the line 5 years from now, it really doesn't compare to paying 200€ / year for an insurance, when all it covers is bringing your laptop to its original state. A swappable SSD can be expanded down the line when storage gets denser / cheaper. All-in-all, I do agree and fully support a degree of integration that's backed by technical motives (i.e. Otherwise unattainable performance), but when the motives start turning into more lock-in and sell-up motives, that's where my support ends. I genuinely do not understand how you could view this as a "good" thing. As for the 90% users who are not going to manually swap out SSDs, it would still be the same ! They won't have to touch them !
indigomm 5y ago
I've always treated a laptop as essentially disposable - by which I mean that in no way do I rely on it to store my data. It's the device I use to manipulate data. Not only could it break, it could get stolen or damaged at any time. The bigger issue is that when the drive breaks, they are essentially unrepairable. The only option is getting Apple to swap out the motherboard with another one. On other devices, I'd just swap an M.2 drive. So it's more of a cost issue.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nsxwolf 5y ago
Is this also why you can’t install Monterey on a non-Apple SSD? I haven’t seen an article acknowledging this problem but others are experiencing it in various forums. My 2013 Mac Pro had an SSD failure so I replaced it with a standard M.2 drive and an adapter. Can’t upgrade.
- neilalexander 5y ago
  I replaced the Fusion Drive in my 2017 iMac with an off-the-shelf Samsung SSD and had no problems at all upgrading to Monterey.
kennywinker 5y ago
The only lens I care about these days is the impending climate disaster. Technology like this, that embodies a lot of carbon and has a built-in expiration date, is getting more and more upsetting to me. I don't need a faster computer, I need air that will still be breathable in 20 years. My next computer will likely be whatever 5-10 year old laptop I can snatch up on it's way to the landfill. It definitely won't be an M1.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- quitit 5y ago
  Landfill and the environment are legitimate concerns.. i’m just gonna quote the website > The new MacBook Pro has been carefully designed with the environment in mind. The enclosure is now made with 100% recycled aluminum. And we use recycled rare earth elements in all the magnets in the product. MacBook Pro is free of numerous harmful substances and all the virgin wood fiber in our packaging comes from responsibly-managed forests. Other notable objectives: 1. full carbon neutrality across their supply chain and services by 2030, inclusive of the use of the device. 2. Recycling and refurb program 3. Circular sourcing (e.g reclamation.) You concerns are valid, but the princess is in another castle.
  - Wingman4l7 5y ago
    I'm going to call very large amounts of BS on #2 -- Apple devices are infamous in electronics refurbishing circles. Thousands of very functional devices are being scrapped instead of being reused because they are soft-bricked due to never being deregistered from iCloud accounts, for various legitimate reasons that have been discussed ad nauseam (and shouldn't be the responsibility of the end user in any case). Many solutions have been repeatedly suggested to Apple to mitigate the e-waste damage from this without compromising their supposed dedication to iCloud-locking to prevent theft; they have fallen on deaf ears.
    - krrrh 5y ago
      If I take a box of old apple devices and accessories to the Apple Store from any point in the history of the company, they will put them through their own recycling program. A box of old PCs will go to my municipal e-waste program and end up in an incinerator (which is the best case scenario, but we know what happens to e-waste in a lot of jurisdictions). That iPhone torturing robot [0] that they demoed a few years back may have seemed a bit silly, but I don't think any other electronics manufacturer is concerned about finding a const-effective way of separating the screws from other metals before recycling everything. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bu-gl7v-P8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bu-gl7v-P8
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
> If you were making your backups bootable in case of hardware failure, then that's an extra logistical chore that you can now retire from your backup strategy. That's some premium-quality snark, right there.
gnicholas 5y ago
I bought an iMac in 2008. When it started getting slow, I bought an external SSD and booted over FireWire 800. It gave my machine many more years of life, and in fact it still works just fine! It's not my daily driver, but I'm glad that I can boot it from an external drive. Too bad my next Mac won't be so flexible!
mahesh_rm 5y ago
Not really knowledgeable of the specifics: Is it really currently unfeasible for a repair shop to figure out how to re-solder a new SSD, and "flash" the T2 chip?
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  Apple Silicon macs lack T2 chips, and you cannot "resolder the SSD" on modern Macs, really, you'd need to resolder 8-16 chips on the actual main board, make sure they are the right kind of chips (not something Apple will tell you), and then pray it works --- did it fail because there's a proprietary process of pairing SSD chips to the motherboard, or because one BGA ball on one of the chips didn't sit correctly? Or because it was the controller that died? It's a nightmare to test and pinpoint, you're better off replacing the thing. There was a video of Louis Rossmann where he explained why he didn't want to do component level repairs on new macs if it was RAM or SSD. I trust his expertise on the matter.
  - mahesh_rm 5y ago
    Great answer, thank you :)
kevwil 5y ago
So if a "Standard Backup" contains all your files, but the machine cannot boot because the internal drive has failed, what is the plan forward? $4k for a new laptop and restore from the backup to the new machine? Kinda makes me glad I'm broke.
qq4 5y ago
Bummer. This is solely how I keep alive my old iMac. You know why? Because of the near-impossible-to-replace drive inside of it!
dsana 5y ago
Good to know that when I get a Mac I should remember to never store user data on it as primary. Must have active sync as primary. The local storage should really be seen as only a cache. This article caused a bit more research summarised as: When that SSD dies the system is dead along with its contents. No particular recovery feasibly possible. So, yeah, that SSD is a cache of the user data for editing local and a disposable boot device. The whole machine is a disposable client device with a built-in obsolescence time line. Good to know. (Add it to the list of other machines with the same design goals)
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Never had any SSD fail in my life ever. This is a worry for some, but its not a realistic fear. You can write TB daily to most SSDs and it'll still not wear out. What's your current SSD's usage written in S.M.A.R.T.?
  - dsana 5y ago
    You're misunderstanding. It's not about the wear. It's about failure of the SSD. Any failure. I've had a SSD fail and it was covered under warranty. Wasn't wear related and it was barely used. A month or so old. So yeah, SSD failure is realistic for me as an issue. YMMV
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      I don't disagree with backing up, but you don't think that will repeat again do you? What brand was it? It sounds like one of those cheap $19-$25 128GB ones with no cache and made with the worst quality, was it one of those? Cheap SSDs are notoriously low quality and unreliable.
      - dsana 5y ago
        Samsung 256gb. It failed. I'm not sure what else to say. I know that SSD fail from direct experience. This doesn't mesh with you. I get it. So yeah a Mac or other device with a soldered SSD is less trustworthy. I'm not even talking backup as best practice or some good idea. I'm actually saying that due to this pattern of unreplaceable SSDs, the cloud copy IS the primary copy. The local copy on SSD is now just a cached file. That is a very big difference. This isn't even an Apple thing. But they are one of the first.
Aastaruth 5y ago
Mac users took the Mac's "External Boot" feature for granted for years now. Now new Apple Software Restore isn't suitable I must say for the new Apple Silicon Mac storage and it is causing lots of issues for Apple Mac users. The article is helpful in many ways. I will surely give a try to CCC 5.1.27 and CCC 6 to make bootable backups on Apple Silicon Macs.
Theofelix 5y ago
The most complicated thing with Mac OS-made silicon is that if the internal storage is not supported, one cannot externally boot it. And that’s a pity.
- Remiluke 5y ago
  Usually, internal storage doesn’t die. But what a user will do if it got damaged. Nothing can be done. Apple has made it clear also. One cannot boot an Apple Silicon Mac if its internal storage is damaged. Apple will surely support "external boot" but it will be more limited and let's see what is on the plate they will offer now.

451 points by concinds 5y ago

Yeah, I am familiar with all that ASR thing. But people are still not sure if it is perfect or not. It proved to be not as robust as it should be.

Isaackane 5y ago
You are right. It's useful, but up to some extent. We've used ASR to perform tens of thousands of its clones and it was not up to the mark. At many points, ASR fails simply with no obvious reasons and explanations. I could not figure out what's actual data is important to back up and what not.

Remiluke 5y ago

It was so easy before for Mac users to drag and drop data and use it for external boot. Then Apple Mac OS X made it more complicated. And now the new Apple Silicon Macs have made it too hard for the user to recover from hardware failure. Through this article, I have got my concerns addressed and now the solution is here. Thumbs up for the info.

Isaackane 5y ago
Yeah the Big Sur has brought a big change by introducing some significant new changes by residing its OS on a cryptographically sealed "Signed System Volume”. Only an Apple-proprietary utility, "Apple Software Restore" (ASR) can copy it and that’s incredible though.

baggy_trough 5y ago

I never cared about bootable backups. What is more of a concern is getting data off a non-bootable Mac that has a viable drive, since Apple often replaces the drive as part of servicing.

xuki 5y ago
The SSD on all new Macs is soldered into the board. If a single component on the board breaks, they replace the whole thing.
323 5y ago
Isn't the drive encrypted anyway, with the key in T2?
- ghaff 5y ago
  Yes. The only real solution is to backup regularly. (And, if you travel, it probably makes sense to regularly copy any critical work in process to an SD card.)
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Not backing up regularly is eventual (potentially massive) data loss even with a machine that doesn't have the limitations mentioned in the linked page. It may not be as common but SSD controllers for example can and do fail sometimes, and in that situation no amount of flexibility on the host computer's part is going to save you.

concinds 5y ago

Article is from May but received no attention, and I believe most people are unaware of this; the Mac needs an iBoot on the internal drive in order to boot from any volume, and thus cannot boot from an external drive if the internal one has failed.

NKosmatos 5y ago
Once again Apple is showing how to do things stupidly. They won't allow you to boot from an external HDD/SSD if the internal one fails. On top of that they make it extremely difficult to replace the internal disk on your own. Carbon Copy Cloner has been my number one program all these years, but I think that Apple is pushing us loyal and technical competent people away. They just want "simple" users.
- im_down_w_otp 5y ago
  They want you to take the device to the dealership.
  - nyxaiur 5y ago
    The SSDs of 2015-2017 macbooks start failing and they are soldered on the board. I have a 12" that I can only boot from external now otherwise the device would be dead. With the M1 models you don't even have the chance to do this. Apple won't even change the failed ssds they will sell you a new logic board for the prize of a new machine. It's infuriating and the only reason I won't buy a machine until they make user replaceable storage the norm again.
    - aluminussoma 5y ago
      I suspect they began soldering it because the cable connecting the disk drive had a lot of problems in older MacBooks. Soldering may have been an easy fix for that. I hate the soldering, too. I'm just offering an explanation that may make some sense given the context.

api 5y ago

Sounds like something a software update could fix. Probably a scenario that was never tested.

nrclark 5y ago
Maybe or maybe not. It depends a lot on how the chip's boot ROM is designed.
ketralnis 5y ago
Intending to support it but never testing it would be a surprise. If I were designing laptop hardware I'd probably spend a lot of time booting it from external media as part of the design process. It would accidentally be the most tested feature of the hardware aside from maybe turning it on.
323 5y ago
You assume it's a bug and not as designed.
- api 5y ago
  If they didn't want people running their own stuff on it, they would have locked it down like an iPad. The fact that they didn't means they wanted it to be possible.

TimTheTinker 5y ago

I'd be curious what Marcan (Asahi Linux founder/hacker) would have to say about this. Perhaps there's a workaround?

garaetjjte 5y ago
>In fact, they do not support external boot disks at all, by design. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26114417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26114417
NobodyNada 5y ago
He’s talked about this quite extensively in the past. Here’s a link to the Asahi project docs: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot > iBoot is the main bootloader on M1 machines. It is small. It cannot understand external storage. It does not support USB. It does not have a UI. All it can do is boot from internal storage, and show an Apple logo, a progress bar, and a few error messages. IIRC he’s said before that iBoot doesn’t even have keyboard support; it can tell if you’re holding down the power button to enter recovery mode, but that’s it. There is no workaround for this; it is not possible to boot over USB if the bootloader does not speak USB.

gameswithgo 5y ago

Consider options like Framework laptops that let you actually own your hardware, and repair it.

Milner08 5y ago
If only they were available in the UK
- darrenf 5y ago
  I'm in the UK too, finding myself unwilling to pay the new Mac prices and getting impatient for the framework. So, recently I've been considering a StarBook Mk V from https://starlabs.systems/ https://starlabs.systems/ They publish a full disassembly guide[0], so I'm reasonably sure the whole thing is repairable and upgradable if necessary. Lots of options for custom build at order time including coreboot. I'm a bit hesitant about a 1920x1080 display but otherwise extremely tempted. [0] https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/guides/starbook-mk-v-complete-disassembly-guide https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/guides/starbook-mk-v-com...
  - GordonS 5y ago
    I hadn't come across this laptop before, thanks for sharing! It looks almost perfect, but only having a single USB-C port is a disappointing choice :(
- fsflover 5y ago
  Perhaps you can consider this one instead: https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 https://puri.sm/products/librem-14.
arbuge 5y ago
Any PC will let you boot from an external drive if the internal drive fails (or even if it doesn't).
yumraj 5y ago
I for one will, if they were to make a 15" :)

niklasrde 5y ago

Does that apply to PXE or the Mac equivalent? I wonder how they will run their diagnistics in the Apple Store if they can't boot their diagnostics tool.

olyjohn 5y ago
Throw it away and give you a new one?
xxpor 5y ago
If they're loading the EFI image off of the SSD, it'd affect that too (unless there's PXE in the bootstrap code, but I seriously doubt it)

keymone 5y ago

i get that their business is at risk, but i've literally never had a macbook disk fail on me in 12 years of dealing with half a dozen laptops (oldest one still in use today). this will get way more attention than it deserves.

VortexDream 5y ago
Not sure how this is relevant in any way. I've seen dozens of MacBooks where the hard drive had failed. Not to say that they fail any more than other laptops, but unless Apple has come up with some magical technology that makes their hard drives never fail, this is a terrible, terrible change. Water is wet, the moon circles the earth and hard drives fail (eventually, some sooner than others).
- asddubs 5y ago
  are you talking about actual hard drives or ssds though?
  - VortexDream 5y ago
    Both. SSDs also fail (yes, it's true). I'm not sure why people seem to think they last forever or that they never fail. They do not last forever. They do fail.
TillE 5y ago
I've had two sudden, total failures of my 2012 Macbook Air drive: once in warranty where it got replaced, once out of warranty. I have indeed been using a USB3 external SSD drive for the OS ever since. Inconvenient, but it works quite well.

rvz 5y ago

Unsurprising. Given the countless times I have warned about the risks of going 'all in' on an Apple Silicon Mac and now they realise. Good luck with your files if the internal hard drive is dead. Consider creating regular backups otherwise your can say goodbye to your files. No thanks and absolutely no deal to that.

SamuelAdams 5y ago
How is this any different than any other computer? If a hard drive fails, recovering data is either impossible or very expensive. Everyone who uses a computer ought to have some sort of backup, either another drive, cloud service, etc.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  Yes, if you have anything of even moderate importance on a computer, not backing up is foolish and will eventually result in loss of data. If plugging in an external drive and letting something like Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner run from time to time is too much trouble there's even options like Backblaze which makes automated incremental backups entirely transparent and effortless. There's no good reason to not backup.
rootusrootus 5y ago
Surely everyone on HN does regular backups of some kind? Most of us probably have two or three different kinds of backups, if I'm to believe what I read here (e.g. I have everything I care about on cloud storage, also backed up by Time Machine, and backed up by Backblaze). If my MBP fails, I'll walk into the Apple Store and swap for a new one, hook up my TM backup and be back working in an hour or so. I've always, always assumed that the internal drive can fail at any moment and take every last byte of data with it.
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Twisell 5y ago
I can't see any scenario on any hardware in which I would not strongly advise to make regular backups. Beside theses laptop are designed to be used (if configured so) with full disk encryption using a strong key stored inside a secure enclave on the cpu. If something is amiss the data is lost, they could almost say it's a feature (but they probably won't as is would be seen as a bug by the majority of people hence this thread).

liminalsunset 5y ago

General grumpiness about this particular design decision aside, it appears that since the T2 Macs, the main SSD was being used to store core system firmware. On T2 I think it's BridgeOS that sends the EFI image to the Intel side to boot it, and it does the firmware verification and loading. This setup has a benefit; namely, it is now impossible to brick the system with a bad BIOS/EFI flash, and you'll never need to use a hardware SPI flasher to recover. Just like the iPhone, you can enter Boot ROM DFU mode, which can't easily be overwritten, and restore all of the firmware on the system that's writable. This is great for restoring systems to a known good firmware state, including SSD, EFI, BridgeOS, RecoveryOS. On a normal system, there is plenty of non volatile storage that is difficult to recover or reset. The primary argument against soldering the SSD, or really any other part, down like this tends to be that "Oh, now you can't just save money by upgrading it yourself|replacing it when it breaks". On the other side, these machines are engineered as appliances that should achieve a certain degree of reliability. The SSD is reasonably considered to last the "lifetime" of the product, and should it fail, I don't consider the inability to externally boot to be a huge problem, since whatever failure damaged the SSD is statistically likely to compromise the reliability of the rest of the board. Any failure is grounds for "rework" of the board on a hardware level if necessary,up to and including repair/replacement of the onboard flash, and not just a simple workaround in my opinion. Note that they don't force you to actually USE the internal SSD - you can still netboot or USB boot I think. It just has to work. Trivia: -At least on T2 systems, the flash memory itself (the NAND chips) on the mainboard can actually be swapped between units after a DFU restore by unsoldering them and transferring them. The person that did this on YouTube notes that a common reason for SSD failure on T2 machines is due to SSD power regulator circuitry being located close to the intake vents on the side of the MacBook Pro. They recommend that users of these machines open them and clean the dust out often, since dust buildup on the actual power regulator combined with moisture sometimes causes a short circuit, sending high voltage to the SSD and damaging it. This kind of failure (high voltage parts close to low voltage ones, close to liquid damage prone areas, without any underfilling) is documented by Louis Rossmann. It is, however, not always feasible or possible to entirely prevent.

bogantech 5y ago
> This setup has a benefit; namely, it is now impossible to brick the system with a bad BIOS/EFI flash, and you'll never need to use a hardware SPI flasher to recover. T2 could have been designed to store / recover the rom in an SPI flash too. It's just cheaper to store it on the SSD

DemiGuru 5y ago

This is old information and no longer the case - https://shirtpocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html https://shirtpocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.htm...

tyingq 5y ago
Though who knows what types of experimentation, trial and error SuperDuper went through to make it work.
- DemiGuru 5y ago
  I know that David Nanian and co worked with Apple to address the issue(s) that prevented them from providing a bootable backup.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    The ability to create bootable backups on external drives as you describe, does not necessarily conflict with the inability to boot from external drives as the post link describes.
concinds 5y ago
I'm not sure your link disproves this article. The first paragraph just says bootable backups are supported (they are by CCC too), and the rest of the page hasn't been changed in years. The SuperDuper blog says: > Note that, as I indicated above, M1 Macs can't readily boot from external drives. There are things you can do, if you have an external Thunderbolt 3 drive (USB-C isn't sufficient), but even that won't work if the internal drive is dead. Unless things change, bootable backups are basically a thing of the past on M1-based Macs. [0] in a January article, and I haven't seen anything that contradicts it in more recent articles. Mind linking? (Note that booting from USB-C is now supported on AS Macs, but booting when the internal drive is dead is not) [0]: https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/comments/thats_big_sir_to_you/ https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/commen...
- 5y ago

yumraj 5y ago

So, in other words, it is actually possible to brick an Apple Silicon Mac computer. Cool!!

mlindner 5y ago

This title is misleading. Apple Silicon Macs can boot from external hard drives just fine. The topic is only about if the drive is failed.

fishtacos 5y ago
Title: "Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed"

xondono 5y ago

I get that for people from IT it sounds surprising, but from a hardware perspective I would say it’s a good change. Instead of having a SPI flash memory with the firmware they’ve gone ahead and merged that into a single flash memory. It’s weird because we are used to see disks as independent modules, but for these devices that’s simply a useless distinction, something that we keep for legacy reasons, not because it provides any meaningful advantage.

mywittyname 5y ago
Being able to swap disks is a meaningful advantage. After all, it's the part most likely to fail first, and often first limitation people hit on a machine. Storage tech is still advancing at a decent clip. In 5 years, there will probably be 4-6TB drives on the market with 2-4x the throughput for the same price as 1TB drives today.
- slownews45 5y ago
  We keep on hearing about folks needing to swap out disks out that are broken who ALSO don't have apple care AND are out of warranty? I mean, how many people is this vs the millions / billions of idevices out there? Apple simplifies / integrates like crazy - that is a focus for them. No separate bios flash - my guess is others start copying them personally. Because apple products hold value so well, I just sell me 2 year old stuff and it can really knock down cost of the new stuff.
  - kuschku 5y ago
    And the people buying your used devices have no apple care and are out of warranty, so they’ll complain if they can’t repair it. Apple devices will stop holding value so well the less repairable they get, which in turn will also increase your costs.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      The "unrepairable" apple devices have far FAR higher resale value and lifetimes than most the Huawei / OPPO / etc used phones out there. This is really the proof point. This is a combination of apples total system engineering and software update story. You don't need applecare to get updtes on an iphone. For example, looking at recently sold items on Ebay - Iphone 5S 32GB is going for $100. That's an 8 year old phone. Take your 8 year old HTC - nothing close to that.

loudtieblahblah 5y ago

Itt: more corporate sycophants a who have reasons for Apple to deny right to repair to their customers The majority of you work at publicly traded companies and it shows.

userbinator 5y ago
Brainwashed propagandists are everywhere. Watch out for them and you may be able to find the truth and the agenda.

aneutron 5y ago

I get that the memory bandwidth and performance of the SoC is intimately tied to the CPU, GPU and memory being on the same silicon (grossly vulgarizing the approach). However, there is no reasonable justification (as far as I can tell) for why the SSD would have to be soldered onto the same SoC, and even less reasonable justification for why the iBoot stuff couldn't be located on an EEPROM or something of the sort, like a secondary BIOS/UEFI. It just boggles my mind why Apple would go so far to limit storage options and even make a straight up bad architectural decision (SSD gone ? You can't boot the 4k€ machine. What ? You bought it 4 years ago ? Well, tough luck.)

slownews45 5y ago
Does anyone laugh a bit at these types of comments? Using these "stupid" and "unjustifiable" approaches, apple has delivered highly reliable / fast machines to lots of users. They come with applecare if you want, which gets you walk in fix/replace at their stores. Note, they've already don't this on iphones - millions shipped. They are going for as much reliability / speed out of this for the 90%+ of users who are not going in to manually swap out SSDs. They are also huge on part simplification, they probably got rid of the bios flash and are just using the SSD flash. My own predication, as in many other areas others will COPY this "stupid" design - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. My guess is others will also stop shipping another set of chargers with everything (again copying apple). They now also sell indefinite applecare, by getting normal breakage down low enough you can keep apple care as long as you want if you keep paying.
- jackorange 5y ago
  Maybe others will also take after apple selling $99 stands and $7 small microfiber cloths.
- aneutron 5y ago
  You are arguing without any arguments. 1) I agree that some integration is intimately tied to how well the machines performs. I also referenced this in my comment. What I don't agree to is the SSD being soldered on. It uses the same PCIe lanes it would use if it was swappable ! As for the "stupid" approach, it really doesn't make much sense to tie the capability of the machine FUNCTIONING to a storage that you cannot change (and that is bound to break eventually from wear & tear, because it's an SSD). 2) The iPhone are a different story. It's a different requirement all together. You have to fit EVERYTHING in a couple of mm2 of surface. That's a very tough requirement, and everyone understands that you can't have the ability of swapping an SSD and having the portability that the iPhone offers at the same time. The same is simply not true for a professional laptop. 3) I sincerely don't see how an iBoot-inspired design would replace UEFI anytime soon. The latter is more powerful as far as I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong). 4) The "support" plan you're describing is in my eyes extortion. If I can buy an SSD for 100€ on Amazon, and replace it down the line 5 years from now, it really doesn't compare to paying 200€ / year for an insurance, when all it covers is bringing your laptop to its original state. A swappable SSD can be expanded down the line when storage gets denser / cheaper. All-in-all, I do agree and fully support a degree of integration that's backed by technical motives (i.e. Otherwise unattainable performance), but when the motives start turning into more lock-in and sell-up motives, that's where my support ends. I genuinely do not understand how you could view this as a "good" thing. As for the 90% users who are not going to manually swap out SSDs, it would still be the same ! They won't have to touch them !

indigomm 5y ago

I've always treated a laptop as essentially disposable - by which I mean that in no way do I rely on it to store my data. It's the device I use to manipulate data. Not only could it break, it could get stolen or damaged at any time. The bigger issue is that when the drive breaks, they are essentially unrepairable. The only option is getting Apple to swap out the motherboard with another one. On other devices, I'd just swap an M.2 drive. So it's more of a cost issue.

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nsxwolf 5y ago

Is this also why you can’t install Monterey on a non-Apple SSD? I haven’t seen an article acknowledging this problem but others are experiencing it in various forums. My 2013 Mac Pro had an SSD failure so I replaced it with a standard M.2 drive and an adapter. Can’t upgrade.

neilalexander 5y ago
I replaced the Fusion Drive in my 2017 iMac with an off-the-shelf Samsung SSD and had no problems at all upgrading to Monterey.

kennywinker 5y ago

The only lens I care about these days is the impending climate disaster. Technology like this, that embodies a lot of carbon and has a built-in expiration date, is getting more and more upsetting to me. I don't need a faster computer, I need air that will still be breathable in 20 years. My next computer will likely be whatever 5-10 year old laptop I can snatch up on it's way to the landfill. It definitely won't be an M1.

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quitit 5y ago
Landfill and the environment are legitimate concerns.. i’m just gonna quote the website > The new MacBook Pro has been carefully designed with the environment in mind. The enclosure is now made with 100% recycled aluminum. And we use recycled rare earth elements in all the magnets in the product. MacBook Pro is free of numerous harmful substances and all the virgin wood fiber in our packaging comes from responsibly-managed forests. Other notable objectives: 1. full carbon neutrality across their supply chain and services by 2030, inclusive of the use of the device. 2. Recycling and refurb program 3. Circular sourcing (e.g reclamation.) You concerns are valid, but the princess is in another castle.
- Wingman4l7 5y ago
  I'm going to call very large amounts of BS on #2 -- Apple devices are infamous in electronics refurbishing circles. Thousands of very functional devices are being scrapped instead of being reused because they are soft-bricked due to never being deregistered from iCloud accounts, for various legitimate reasons that have been discussed ad nauseam (and shouldn't be the responsibility of the end user in any case). Many solutions have been repeatedly suggested to Apple to mitigate the e-waste damage from this without compromising their supposed dedication to iCloud-locking to prevent theft; they have fallen on deaf ears.
  - krrrh 5y ago
    If I take a box of old apple devices and accessories to the Apple Store from any point in the history of the company, they will put them through their own recycling program. A box of old PCs will go to my municipal e-waste program and end up in an incinerator (which is the best case scenario, but we know what happens to e-waste in a lot of jurisdictions). That iPhone torturing robot [0] that they demoed a few years back may have seemed a bit silly, but I don't think any other electronics manufacturer is concerned about finding a const-effective way of separating the screws from other metals before recycling everything. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bu-gl7v-P8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bu-gl7v-P8

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

> If you were making your backups bootable in case of hardware failure, then that's an extra logistical chore that you can now retire from your backup strategy. That's some premium-quality snark, right there.

gnicholas 5y ago

I bought an iMac in 2008. When it started getting slow, I bought an external SSD and booted over FireWire 800. It gave my machine many more years of life, and in fact it still works just fine! It's not my daily driver, but I'm glad that I can boot it from an external drive. Too bad my next Mac won't be so flexible!

mahesh_rm 5y ago

Not really knowledgeable of the specifics: Is it really currently unfeasible for a repair shop to figure out how to re-solder a new SSD, and "flash" the T2 chip?

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
Apple Silicon macs lack T2 chips, and you cannot "resolder the SSD" on modern Macs, really, you'd need to resolder 8-16 chips on the actual main board, make sure they are the right kind of chips (not something Apple will tell you), and then pray it works --- did it fail because there's a proprietary process of pairing SSD chips to the motherboard, or because one BGA ball on one of the chips didn't sit correctly? Or because it was the controller that died? It's a nightmare to test and pinpoint, you're better off replacing the thing. There was a video of Louis Rossmann where he explained why he didn't want to do component level repairs on new macs if it was RAM or SSD. I trust his expertise on the matter.
- mahesh_rm 5y ago
  Great answer, thank you :)

kevwil 5y ago

So if a "Standard Backup" contains all your files, but the machine cannot boot because the internal drive has failed, what is the plan forward? $4k for a new laptop and restore from the backup to the new machine? Kinda makes me glad I'm broke.

qq4 5y ago

Bummer. This is solely how I keep alive my old iMac. You know why? Because of the near-impossible-to-replace drive inside of it!

dsana 5y ago

Good to know that when I get a Mac I should remember to never store user data on it as primary. Must have active sync as primary. The local storage should really be seen as only a cache. This article caused a bit more research summarised as: When that SSD dies the system is dead along with its contents. No particular recovery feasibly possible. So, yeah, that SSD is a cache of the user data for editing local and a disposable boot device. The whole machine is a disposable client device with a built-in obsolescence time line. Good to know. (Add it to the list of other machines with the same design goals)

GhettoComputers 5y ago
Never had any SSD fail in my life ever. This is a worry for some, but its not a realistic fear. You can write TB daily to most SSDs and it'll still not wear out. What's your current SSD's usage written in S.M.A.R.T.?
- dsana 5y ago
  You're misunderstanding. It's not about the wear. It's about failure of the SSD. Any failure. I've had a SSD fail and it was covered under warranty. Wasn't wear related and it was barely used. A month or so old. So yeah, SSD failure is realistic for me as an issue. YMMV
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    I don't disagree with backing up, but you don't think that will repeat again do you? What brand was it? It sounds like one of those cheap $19-$25 128GB ones with no cache and made with the worst quality, was it one of those? Cheap SSDs are notoriously low quality and unreliable.
    - dsana 5y ago
      Samsung 256gb. It failed. I'm not sure what else to say. I know that SSD fail from direct experience. This doesn't mesh with you. I get it. So yeah a Mac or other device with a soldered SSD is less trustworthy. I'm not even talking backup as best practice or some good idea. I'm actually saying that due to this pattern of unreplaceable SSDs, the cloud copy IS the primary copy. The local copy on SSD is now just a cached file. That is a very big difference. This isn't even an Apple thing. But they are one of the first.

Aastaruth 5y ago

Mac users took the Mac's "External Boot" feature for granted for years now. Now new Apple Software Restore isn't suitable I must say for the new Apple Silicon Mac storage and it is causing lots of issues for Apple Mac users. The article is helpful in many ways. I will surely give a try to CCC 5.1.27 and CCC 6 to make bootable backups on Apple Silicon Macs.

Theofelix 5y ago

The most complicated thing with Mac OS-made silicon is that if the internal storage is not supported, one cannot externally boot it. And that’s a pity.

Remiluke 5y ago
Usually, internal storage doesn’t die. But what a user will do if it got damaged. Nothing can be done. Apple has made it clear also. One cannot boot an Apple Silicon Mac if its internal storage is damaged. Apple will surely support "external boot" but it will be more limited and let's see what is on the plate they will offer now.