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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

#191

Post by somebehemoth »

slownews45 wrote: post #156
aneutron wrote: post #118

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, l…

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 no…

Laughing at other peoples' opinions doesn't make you more correct. Corporations copying each other to increase profit does not prove this is the right thing to do for all users.

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

#192

Post by kennywinker »

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.

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

#193

Post by donkeyd »

azalemeth wrote: post #182
wtallis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, exhausting NAND write endurance is usually not what causes SSDs to fail in the field. It is especially unlikely to be the underlying cause of unexpected and seemingly premature catastrophic SSD failure. Also, it is not possible for an SSD to decrease your usable storage space over time. That would break any partition table format or filesystem that expects an ordinary block device. It also wouldn't win y…

> It is especially unlikely to be the underlying cause of unexpected and seemingly premature catastrophic SSD failure. One of my graduate students experienced this, the hard way: writing up his thesis, his mum plugged in "the wrong USB C" charger. I don't know exactly what happened, but the board was utterly fried. The problem with the soldered-to-the-motherboard, everything-utterly-encrypted approach is that it's al…

> soldered-to-the-motherboard, everything-utterly-encrypted approach is that it's almost impossible to do data recovery

Well, that's kind of the point.

> You just have to be damn sure that you back it up correctly.

Exactly. And that's as easy as plugging in an external hard drive occasionally, or storing critical files in the cloud.

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

#194

Post by wpearse »

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…

> it is now impossible to brick the system with a bad BIOS/EFI flash

I had to flash the T2 to do a Bug Sur update on my 2018 Mac Mini a couple weeks ago. The flash failed and bricked the machine.

Sent the machine in for service and the entire logic board was replaced under warranty, the machine was at least 2 years out of warranty as far as I know. This makes me think failed flashes are a known issue?

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

#196

Post by djrogers »

throw3849 wrote: post #154
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…

》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 Are you trolling? The primary argument is data recovery. Anything on laptop can die: charging port, motherboard... With soldered ssd your data are gone! You need to resolder SSD into exact same machine type, it may take 5 wee…

Given that the encryption keys for the SSD are stored in the Secure Enclave, moving the SSD elsewhere wouldn't do you any good anyway.

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

#197

Post by [deleted] »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #40
cyberbanjo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the used 2011 i3, that wouldn't become garbage if it were repairable would get sold to someone less performance / price consciousness? Now it gets trashed.

Nope, nobody wants it. You can try to sell it though. People don’t want even a free processor that needs an expensive mobo they’ll need to buy our own when they can get a much better ryzen board and a cheap processor that will trounce it. Nobody wants these old processors, many are so useless they’re being drilled for keychains.

[deleted]

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

#198

Post by notimetorelax »

azalemeth wrote: post #182
wtallis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, exhausting NAND write endurance is usually not what causes SSDs to fail in the field. It is especially unlikely to be the underlying cause of unexpected and seemingly premature catastrophic SSD failure. Also, it is not possible for an SSD to decrease your usable storage space over time. That would break any partition table format or filesystem that expects an ordinary block device. It also wouldn't win y…

> It is especially unlikely to be the underlying cause of unexpected and seemingly premature catastrophic SSD failure. One of my graduate students experienced this, the hard way: writing up his thesis, his mum plugged in "the wrong USB C" charger. I don't know exactly what happened, but the board was utterly fried. The problem with the soldered-to-the-motherboard, everything-utterly-encrypted approach is that it's al…

These days I don’t understand why people don’t sync their important files to cloud. Dropbox has a free layer that’s perfectly fit for a theses.

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

#199

Post by bitwize »

webmobdev wrote: post #162
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 just reads like BS. Because it partly is. It's just a lame defence / justification of soldering SSD, RAM and other parts, the major advantage of which is to make modern electronics more complex, hard to repair and prevent upgrades (i.e. "planned obsolescence"). If SSDs were reliable beyond 5+ years, manufacturers would be highlighting that and even offering guarantees for such a period. (Hell, most RAM today…

Except soldering everything on can give you HUGE performance boosts. Like, laptops come with soldered-on RAM that you can't get in a DIMM configuration because the soldered on stuff is so fast it needs a fast path to the CPU, which DIMM slots can't provide. And now with Apple building all system RAM directly into the chip die, it's just a whole new ballgame.

So you can either go modular and have a slow PC, or you can have decent performance and just accept that everything is going to be soldered on and irreplaceable.

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

#200

Post by CelestialTeapot »

donkeyd wrote: post #193
azalemeth wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is especially unlikely to be the underlying cause of unexpected and seemingly premature catastrophic SSD failure. One of my graduate students experienced this, the hard way: writing up his thesis, his mum plugged in "the wrong USB C" charger. I don't know exactly what happened, but the board was utterly fried. The problem with the soldered-to-the-motherboard, everything-utterly-encrypted approach is that it's al…

> soldered-to-the-motherboard, everything-utterly-encrypted approach is that it's almost impossible to do data recovery Well, that's kind of the point. > You just have to be damn sure that you back it up correctly. Exactly. And that's as easy as plugging in an external hard drive occasionally, or storing critical files in the cloud.

>> soldered-to-the-motherboard, everything-utterly-encrypted approach is that it's almost impossible to do data recovery

>Well, that's kind of the point.

Not that I don't appreciate a security-minded platform, it just seems overkill for 99% of the people who'll purchase them, and do nothing but cause heartache when the internal SSD fails. And fail they do. it's rare, but I've had several SSDs (Toshiba and Crucial, if it matters) fail within 1-2 years of moderate usage. No warning there was an issue, the drives just disappeared one day and I was left looking for backups.

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