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

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

#91

Post by [deleted] »

asdff wrote: post #48
nyxaiur wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think it will be the price of a new machine, it will be the price of a flat rate repair which is a fixed price for any sort of work past a certain point (as far as the genius bar worker described to me at least). For my 2020 laptop it could explode in a fireball and Apple will repair it for $418 before tax, my flat rate for this laptop.

[deleted]

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

#92

Post by funnyflamigo »

narraturgy wrote: post #53
funnyflamigo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. My thinkpad x230t is still going strong nearly 10 years later (extreme example). With 16GB of ram and an SSD it's still a decently capable machine. If you're the type of person that needs the _fastest_ computer then yeah obviously you're upgrading every year. Or if you work on large codebases, etc. But if you don't care about that, you can easily go 4+ years with your laptop. Yes computers have gotten fas…

This is a tangential question. I adore my Thinkpad x230t but it has a whopping ~1 hour battery life at this point. Do you leave yours permanently plugged in or do you have some sort of modern battery solution for our ancient beast with an amazing keyboard?

I've had the same issue, I've replaced the battery once but I've found that if you're running any type of workload then ~1 hour is the best you can hope for. Luckily I rarely need it mobile for more then an hour, but I might look into modding the battery.

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

#93

Post by asdff »

nyxaiur wrote: post #78
asdff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it will be the price of a new machine, it will be the price of a flat rate repair which is a fixed price for any sort of work past a certain point (as far as the genius bar worker described to me at least). For my 2020 laptop it could explode in a fireball and Apple will repair it for $418 before tax, my flat rate for this laptop.

680 Euros quoted from the apple store in berlin for a 2012 macbook.

Everything apple is vastly more expensive in europe, can't be compared to US contexts. You pay a few hundred more at least for iphones too. Seriously, a good population of people actually fly to Portland to stock up on apple gear, and fly back to Europe or India or other places. No sales taxes in Oregon too so you save even more, sometimes its enough to pay for airfare compared to buying in California even with 10% sales taxes being somewhat typical there.

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

#95

Post by lowbloodsugar »

nyxaiur wrote: post #13
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want you to take the device to the dealership.

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…

I noticed that AppleCare, which use to be a one-time purchase of 3-year coverage, is now offered as an annual purchase that can be renewed indefinitely. Presumably this means that, as long as I pay my $150 rent, they will replace my logic board, with its failed SSD, for free?

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

#96

Post by 1123581321 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #76
liminalsunset wrote: post #26

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 u…

>whatever failure damaged the SSD is statistically likely to compromise the reliability of the rest of the board Sorry, but how? That's just reads like BS. SSDs have limited lifespans due to the limited write cycles of the NAND chips. So no, what damages NAND does not damage the rest of the board. The more you write and swap to flash, the faster it wears out, taking your Macbook down with it when it dies. Granted, I…

I think you are using old information. Any modern SSD should be good for a few hundred to several hundred TB and may reach a PB. It would be very hard to use a personal computer that heavily. Most people would take 20 years or more.

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

#97

Post by asddubs »

VortexDream wrote: post #32
keymone wrote: post #16

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.

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).

are you talking about actual hard drives or ssds though?

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

#98

Post by xondono »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #76
liminalsunset wrote: post #26

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 u…

>whatever failure damaged the SSD is statistically likely to compromise the reliability of the rest of the board Sorry, but how? That's just reads like BS. SSDs have limited lifespans due to the limited write cycles of the NAND chips. So no, what damages NAND does not damage the rest of the board. The more you write and swap to flash, the faster it wears out, taking your Macbook down with it when it dies. Granted, I…

Limited write cycles will produce data corruption, but what the article explains is that Apple is using the Flash in M1 macs in a similar way to other ARM devices, that is, they have the firmware there.

I don’t know how much time do you expect your mac to last, but write cycles on your firmware should not be much of a concern.

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

#99

Post by MangoCoffee »

bastardoperator wrote: post #59
gameswithgo wrote: post #7

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

Assuming you want to do repair, I have no interest in repairing anything. In fact I'll happily part with my money to not have to deal with repairing stuff. Same applies to my car.

I don't want to repair my laptop either but I want to upgrade my laptop a year or two down the line. The modern laptop can go much further with a simple upgrade like RAM or SSD HD.

Apple's laptop is really limited in this way. The older generation of Apple's laptop allowed you to upgrade RAM and HD.

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

#100

Post by gruez »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #76
liminalsunset wrote: post #26

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 u…

>whatever failure damaged the SSD is statistically likely to compromise the reliability of the rest of the board Sorry, but how? That's just reads like BS. SSDs have limited lifespans due to the limited write cycles of the NAND chips. So no, what damages NAND does not damage the rest of the board. The more you write and swap to flash, the faster it wears out, taking your Macbook down with it when it dies. Granted, I…

that's true, but it's far more likely for the mainboard to get soaked/smashed than the NAND running out of write cycles.
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