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Don’t format a drive of M1 Macs from recovery mode

giuliomagnifico.medium.com

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Re: Don’t format a drive of M1 Macs from recovery mode

#101

Post by crististm »

southerntofu wrote: post #89
lupire wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is going to walk a away with my fridge? How about my car? Many users appreciate having anti-theft protections on their easy to physically-access devices, and very few need to wipe of the owner's account. It's great that you have a niche use case, but that doesn't make your case the priority over the main use cases.

> Who is going to walk a away with my fridge? People would steal your wallet, your jewelry... There's a lot more value to be extracted from a stolen credit card than from a "smart" phone. > It's great that you have a niche use case, but that doesn't make your case the priority over the main use cases. You're taking it the other way around. The common use case for first-world software developers is the niche use case…

Think of it as a 'fuck you' to the thief and whoever might get the brick. Maybe you get that, otherwise you can be bitter all you want about the inequality and how stealing will resolve that.

Re: Don’t format a drive of M1 Macs from recovery mode

#102

Post by GeekyBear »

simonh wrote: post #2

The one area with these M1 Macs that seems barely even half cooked is how they treat their disks. Does anyone know if this due to hardware limitations in the M1 architecture, or are the restrictions in the firmware level? I'm wondering if this is even fixable by Apple in later updates.

The free Apple Configurator 2 utility will factory reset an M1 Mac, even if the firmware is completely hosed.

It's also much quicker than Windows 10's "Reset this PC" functionality, which doesn't work at all if the OS or firmware is hosed.

Re: Don’t format a drive of M1 Macs from recovery mode

#104

Post by Theodores »

matsemann wrote: post #79
Theodores wrote: post #63

Genuine question, but do Apple users upgrade to the latest version of the OS or is that optional? Just asking for a friend.

MacOS upgrades are often heavily breaking stuff. So developers will have to release new versions of their software fixing various bugs or be compliant with some new demand from MacOS for running. This often also leads to the new versions not being compatible with older OS versions or at least not being maintained. So as a user you're often forced to upgrade the OS if you want to use the newest versions of various sof…

Thanks. It is webP support in Safari that interests me (well, my friend...).

So this arrived in September 2020. What I want to know is if normal Apple users, i.e. not programmers, whether they can benefit from webP images yet, when using the default Safari browser.

I have no idea in this pandemic about basic things.

Re: Don’t format a drive of M1 Macs from recovery mode

#105

Post by ajconway »

mehrdada wrote: post #14

The easiest way to reinstall iOS Big Sur macOS on M1 Macs is to treat them as what they really are, glorified iOS devices, and DFU restore the operating system from another Mac with Apple Configurator or similar tools (macOS is downloaded as an .ipsw file and deployed on the M1 Mac). Works like a charm and is quite fast and guaranteed (barring bootrom/physical hacks) to ensure the device is not running non-Apple soft…

This comment is downvoted, but surprisingly it was the correct way to resolve the issue after attempting to "factory reset" an M1 Mac.

Re: Don’t format a drive of M1 Macs from recovery mode

#106

Post by jsmith45 »

userbinator wrote: post #99
marcan_42 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "bricks" your Mac, and you have to do a DFU restore with Apple Configurator 2 to recover from it. The SSD on these Macs contains system firmware, including the boot picker and recovery mode. Do not wipe the entire top-level block device. They cannot boot from external media, by design. M1 Macs are not PCs, and you shouldn't blindly apply whatever you think you know from the PC world. Their low-level design is mu…

Their low-level design is much closer to an embedded device like a Raspberry Pi, minus the SD card slot. ...or like a iPhone. From that article you linked: Some PC motherboards implement a similar feature as part of a separate chip, which can flash the UEFI firmware from a USB stick without actually turning on the motherboard normally, but this is only common in higher-end stand alone motherboards. That might be refe…

How would boot block recovery work without a CPU installed at all?

Because modern bios flashback does indeed read from the USB and write to one of the bios chips without even the CPU in place. Obviously there is some form of micro-controller performing this.

On intel, I suppose it would be possible for the management engine CPU in the chipset to do this, but I doubt intel lets motherboard makers run custom code on that, so if it is not some standardized feature, it could not be that. On AMD Ryzen, I'm not aware of a CPU in the chipset.

This all makes me think there is some other microcontroller somewhere that controls the bios flashback process, which would almost certainly be an extra chip.

Re: Don’t format a drive of M1 Macs from recovery mode

#107

Post by Solid_Applaud »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #43
digi59404 wrote: post #25

This is because the author didn't delete the entire volume group. You have to delete the whole volume group, i.e. erase the entire drive and it's partitions to reinstall OSX. This isn't new with the M1 Macs. This has been a thing since they introduced APFS. When they went into disk utility after the cli - Then they could delete everything and kick off the OSX Install. If the APFS Volume Group still exists the install…

I was kind of shocked at how hard it is to factory reset a MacBook. I had one at work and I had to pass it on and the guide is a multi step process which I messed up the first time and ended up reinstalling with my user account still there. Had to start again which takes hours. Why does the recovery not just have a button called factory reset which unlinks your apple account, deletes the volume and then sets it all u…

If you are reading this and you want to truly restore the internal drive to factory original state minus wear and you have a Macbook that is able to boot a Linux from USB:

If you have nvme storage use blkdiscard to wipe it:

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/blkdiscard.8.html

Or

nvme format with the --ses option, see available ses options here:

https://www.mankier.com/1/nvme-format

Otherwise use ATA Secure Erase with the suspend trick to unfreeze the drive:

https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

Re: Don’t format a drive of M1 Macs from recovery mode

#108

Post by wtallis »

Solid_Applaud wrote: post #107
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was kind of shocked at how hard it is to factory reset a MacBook. I had one at work and I had to pass it on and the guide is a multi step process which I messed up the first time and ended up reinstalling with my user account still there. Had to start again which takes hours. Why does the recovery not just have a button called factory reset which unlinks your apple account, deletes the volume and then sets it all u…

If you are reading this and you want to truly restore the internal drive to factory original state minus wear and you have a Macbook that is able to boot a Linux from USB: If you have nvme storage use blkdiscard to wipe it: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/blkdiscard.8.html Or nvme format with the --ses option, see available ses options here: https://www.mankier.com/1/nvme-format Otherwise use ATA Secure Erase w…

Adding on to this: blkdiscard should work fine for SATA or NVMe drives, if you just want to make the drive blank. SATA drives technically have the option of ignoring TRIM commands, but I'm not sure it was ever actually common for them to do so.

Suspending and waking a PC to unlock a drive can be necessary for SATA or NVMe drives. SATA drives also give you the alternative of hot-swapping the drive, but that's not practical for consumer NVMe drives or consumer host systems.

Re: Don’t format a drive of M1 Macs from recovery mode

#109

Post by 1996 »

southerntofu wrote: post #89
lupire wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is going to walk a away with my fridge? How about my car? Many users appreciate having anti-theft protections on their easy to physically-access devices, and very few need to wipe of the owner's account. It's great that you have a niche use case, but that doesn't make your case the priority over the main use cases.

> Who is going to walk a away with my fridge? People would steal your wallet, your jewelry... There's a lot more value to be extracted from a stolen credit card than from a "smart" phone. > It's great that you have a niche use case, but that doesn't make your case the priority over the main use cases. You're taking it the other way around. The common use case for first-world software developers is the niche use case…

> Once your iPhone is stolen, it's gone. No iCloud lock is going to bring it back, so why prevent other, less-privileged folks from using it when you can't use it?

Because I would like to inflict damage back. Stealing from me cause damage. I do not believe thieves should get a free pass on causing me damages just because they are less privileged.

Ideally, a small amount of C4 and a "remote explode" taking a few fingers off the thief would be a proper deterrent, as well as a good use of Sharia law.

Re: Don’t format a drive of M1 Macs from recovery mode

#110

Post by blacksmith_tb »

southerntofu wrote: post #80
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should just ask for your Apple ID password when you do the reset. It’s not that hard. Honestly it should even be an option within the main OS

Why, though? Physical access to the hardware should prevent you from accessing existing files (encryption at rest) but should not prevent you from resetting/reusing the device. Does your fridge come with FridgeID? Or a book? Introducing such mechanisms is really hostile to users, especially poorer users of second-hand hardware who have to go through extra (shady) hoops to get a device running just because some rich S…

I think the argument that locking down hardware is unfair to thieves is not likely to garner a lot of support. But the larger argument that it's unfair to users should. The majority of whom didn't know they were signing up for a machine that is so theft-proof they can't give it to a grandparent or donate it to a school. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that easily-bricked hardware leads to more sales for Apple (and I hope I don't need to wipe my Mini any time soon...)
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