Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if internal drive failed • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by slownews45 » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

pram wrote: post #249

aneutron wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your assumption is incorrect. The SSD on any Mac with a T2/M1 is not like an NVME SSD you'd pick up from the store. The soldered modules themselves are just NAND storage, the T2/M1 is the actual storage controller. They're literally non-functional otherwise.

My impression was they were also going to try and move the T2 off being a separate (potentially replaceable) chip and integrate it with the M1 - did that happen yet or still to happen? But one thing you get on a mac is basically hardware level security for the SSD.

Bad news, data recovery will be hard / impossible. Good news, if you sell the thing on pretty unlikely next person will get your data or can remove the "drive" and try to crack it offline. Not sure how imaging a mac drive works these days either?

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

#262

Post by alpaca128 » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #199

webmobdev wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This argument doesn't work with Apple. They built laptops that could literally just use 50% of their CPU because of insufficient cooling. Not too long ago they released a Macbook with a CPU cooler that doesn't even have direct contact with the CPU. And when LTT modded the cooler to fix it they realised the performance was still not better because the power delivery is insufficient as well.

Also our PCs are not slow, modular or not. In many cases hardware is not the bottleneck.

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

#263

Post by pkaye » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #172

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…

> Also, it is not possible for an SSD to decrease your usable storage space over time. It totally could be possible. For Windows/Linux, you could have a daemon that creates a 'ssd_wear' file which grows in size as the SSD wears out, and messages to the SSD which physical blocks it occupies. Mac could obviously do a deeper integration directly into the OS. > all of your blocks are on the verge of failure A failed bloc…

I used to work on SSD firmware. I did implement something like the above for a custom solution for caching. When the flash storage is running low on space, it reduced the reported storage capacity and notifies the host which will need to trim some data to bring it below the reported storage capacity. The striping of data across multiple blocks also has been implemented. You could fail an entire NAND die and it would still function though a little slower assuming you still have enough spare blocks.

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

#264

Post by pvarangot » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

GhettoComputers wrote: post #161

pvarangot wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a candidate for the bin after the warranty expired, which can be surprisingly quick All my all Macs sold for great value after I was done with them or got a better one, even with an expired guarantee. It took like a week or two to sell them. I'm still stuck with Thinkpads because the used market is shit. My last Thinkpad I got kinda impulsively as a workstation for Ableton is my deepest regret. It was a year ago, t…

Which one did you get?

It's a P53 with 32gb ram, 1tb SSD, an i7-9750H and a Quadro. It's a beast. It smokes my one year newer similar MacBook Pro because it actually runs at clock rate because it doesn't get as hot. But no one wants it because it's a niche market to have an ugly workstation on your desk. If I could sell it for something like 1600 I would buy an M1 Mac in a brim but it's really though. They go from 600 to 900 on Craigslist, it's insane, I feel really dumb for buying it, a MacBook with half the RAM and SSD goes for 1400 to 1600 and the GPU sucks.

I'm thinking about plugging it to the TV and using it as a Steam console or something like that, my girlfriend games. But it's a fucking expensive console.

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

#265

Post by wtallis » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #260

wtallis wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What drive? What was the end of life behavior you observed? Catastrophic failure, or SMART data showing wearout?

Not the parent but I had this happen to me. It was a top of the line Samsung SSD at the time. Catastrophic failure. Was working fine then one day I rebooted and it never came back. I usually plan for failure of each drive every 2-3 years and buy them on Black Friday. But if that took out my entire 3.5k-4k m1 max laptop I'd be rather disappointed. It's $200 to replace a SSD.

So, that failure mode makes it pretty much impossible to conclusively attribute it to wearing out the NAND write endurance. You probably hit a firmware bug or failure in a different SSD component, otherwise you would most likely have been getting warnings from your OS about impending drive failure based on SMART data.

SSD wrote endurance is an unavoidable ticking time bomb. But it is nowhere near as unpredictable or imminent as many people assume. It's a failure mode that doesn't sneak up on you, and usually takes real effort to trigger. Other failure mechanisms are much more important.

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

#266

Post by formerly_proven » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #124

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…

On the other hand, my x200t, which isn't that much older, is minimally functional for the web and is effectively nonfunctional for YouTube. I keep it around because it works as a kiosk in my recording studio, but that's about it.

mpv with --script-opts=ytdl_hook-ytdl_path=yt-dlp allows to watch Youtube videos with a fraction of the system load that Youtube demands in a browser.

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

#267

Post by slownews45 » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

somebehemoth wrote: post #191

slownews45 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point is having separate eeproms, separate bios flash memory, separate storage controller in SSD drive etc etc - apple focuses very hard on NOT doing any of that.

They are CONSTANTLY pushing down part counts.

The claim that there is "no reason" for this is ridiculous. There are at least 10 good businesses reasons, from part count / inventory complexity, to assembly time, to durability to get rid of parts, connectors, ribbon cables etc etc.

The best part is no part.

And yes, it makes folks putting in (often crap) replacement parts and reselling things (without disclosure) harder too. Does apple care about that? No. And there is a good business reason for them not to care, their users want a trusted device. Apple brand strength is at record highs.

As speeds scale, bus speeds scale, frankly apple is going to have the advantage if they can tie things in better. At some point you can't run PCI full speed over things like a replaceable cable, the tolerances are too tight (16GT/s etc).

On HN it's like reading of folks who are used to stone blocks, very modular and stackable and replaceable, yes, complain about something like concrete with rebar in it.

You really realize the mentality advantage apple has when you come here. While other companies are dumping tons of parts, connectors, EEPROM flash ships (which BTW can brick the system if the update doesn't work) Apple is streamlining and integrating.

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

#268

Post by shawnz » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

lostgame wrote: post #252

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…

>> and should it fail, I don't consider the inability to externally boot to be a huge problem …the flying fuck?! I stopped reading here. I was all for your comment until I heard this nonsense. …in what world is this acceptable? What computer have you personally purchased between 1980-2010 that could not have had this core essential part simply replaced if it did not function correctly? I’m not sorry for complaining;…

I don't see why maintaining past expectations is such an important design consideration as you're making it out to be. Expectations change as needs change. Do you still expect to be able to replace your BIOS flash chip, or the controller on your HDD?

Furthermore, do you really believe it's a realistic scenario that a customer would be buying a top-of-the-line flagship device for which portability is a main selling feature, only to be carrying around some aftermarket storage everywhere to boot it with when it begins to fail?

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

#269

Post by tzs » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

CelestialTeapot wrote: post #201

bitwize wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry, what? Citation please. The speed lost moving a DIMM from a 3cm path-to-CPU to a removable DIMM slot 6cm away is infinitesimal. You would not notice it.

The speed lost due to distance would be infinitesimal, but is that the only speed loss there would be? I'd expect that parasitic inductance and parasitic capacitance would be higher in a socketed system which would impose speed limits.

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

#270

Post by alpaca128 » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

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.

Harder to repair products are more expensive to repair. This is the main reason Apple locks down everything so much and fights independent repair shops at every corner. Repair monopolies are profitable too.

It doesn't matter whether you want to repair it or not, in the long term you can only lose when you don't care how hard it is to repair.