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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

#301

Post by notriddle »

CelestialTeapot wrote: post #200
donkeyd wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Not that I don't appreciate a security-minded platform, it just seems overkill for 99% of the people who'll purchase them

No man is an island. If my mom is insecure, then all the messages I sent her are leaked, too, no matter how secure I try to be. If my boss is insecure, then I'm even worse off than that.

Also, if high-security stuff is normalized, then you don't wind up stuck in a place where you have to choose between "the secure option" and "the option that can actually run the apps I need." E2E encrypting the whole world is also the best defense against the government passing laws that make E2E encryption illegal.

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

#302

Post by kennywinker »

quitit wrote: post #273
kennywinker wrote: post #192

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 a…

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-m…

That's all fine and good, but once any single component of that block of embodied carbon fails the whole thing is now e-waste. Which means I guess apple is buying up carbon offsets in order to recycle that e-waste back into a new M2 or M3 mac? How much faith do you have in carbon offsets? The aluminum and rare earth elements are recycled - what about the rest of it?

A modular design means a failed SSD only sends the SSD - not the entire product - into the waste (recycle?) chain.

Apple has a lot of engineering resources, and the fact that they are not spending those resources to make a computer that will still be in service in 10, 15, or 20 years is the problem.

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

#303

Post by GhettoComputers »

dsego wrote: post #274
GhettoComputers wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thinkpad trackpads are $15 new. If you want to get repairable laptops just get business laptops. Don’t be fooled by the marketing, many Dell, HP and Lenovo laptops have those benefits on top of a huge aftermarket which framework doesn’t have and can’t leverage. You can way cheaper buy a broken laptop of the same model and fix yours with it whereas framework will only have their niche market which won’t be cheaper…

Broke my t480s screen, found a replacement from a german online store, ordered it and it came to my address in croatia in a day or two. Went to a local repair shop and had it installed in less than 20 minutes. Imagine doing the same with a macbook, lol.

You can do it yourself next time in under 7 even for a first time. Its very easy. I did it in 3 minutes my first time.

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

#304

Post by qudat »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #17
gameswithgo wrote: post #7

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

Silly idea in tech, the hardware will be long outdated before someone look for parts which are going to be overpriced, and the company might be gone forever. You can buy common business laptops such as thinkpad and swap the parts easily and cheaply. People aren’t swapping their 2011 i3 for a 2011 i7 if they care about performance; they’re getting an i5 from 2018. None of these swappable parts are unique aside from th…

When you upgrade the cpu on a framework laptop, you upgrade the board as well. So Framework owners can upgrade to a 2018 i5 or an AMD or even an ARM cpu if Framework offers it.

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

#305

Post by grishka »

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.

> Well, that's kind of the point.

Being able to yoink the SSD from the original machine, plug it into another compatible one, and decrypt the contents with your password, is not a vulnerability, it's a feature.

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

#306

Post by GhettoComputers »

qudat wrote: post #304
GhettoComputers wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly idea in tech, the hardware will be long outdated before someone look for parts which are going to be overpriced, and the company might be gone forever. You can buy common business laptops such as thinkpad and swap the parts easily and cheaply. People aren’t swapping their 2011 i3 for a 2011 i7 if they care about performance; they’re getting an i5 from 2018. None of these swappable parts are unique aside from th…

When you upgrade the cpu on a framework laptop, you upgrade the board as well. So Framework owners can upgrade to a 2018 i5 or an AMD or even an ARM cpu if Framework offers it.

At that point I am sure it'll be much cheaper and faster to buy another laptop on sale instead of waiting for framework to make the motherboard with the CPU you want (if they do it at all), and pay extra for custom parts that only fit their latop, therefore locking you into their hardware ecosystem, no different from Apple except the parts are all generic x64 and you don't gain anything other than having in fit in the form factor of their device. The case is not so unique or special that someone would be unwilling to have another device, pay extra for some CPU/mobo laptop combo that only fits in one laptop, and never want another laptop casing again keeping as many of the old part as possible includuing to choose to keep the used chemical batteries in the framework laptop rather than have another cheaper computer with all new parts.

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

#307

Post by kennywinker »

krrrh wrote: post #288
Wingman4l7 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

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 b…

The question is what percentage of the material that enters their recycling program actually cycles back into new things, and how much carbon is burnt doing that.

I'm glad apple is exerting engineering resources to make their products recyclable and out of recycled materials - but I also can't ignore that linking the lifespan of the entire computer to the lifespan of the SSD is going to result in many unnecessarily discarded computers.

If 75% of the materials are recycled (generous, I couldn't find recent numbers but in 2010 they were recycling 28%) that means one landfilled mac for every 4 recycled. If a machine is killed by it's SSD, that's at LEAST a quarter of a mac in the landfill.

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

#308

Post by dsana »

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)

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

#309

Post by lamontcg »

radley wrote: post #293
lamontcg wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I just ordered a 16" MBP M1 and my math was that I routinely run with about 1TB of storage with a lot of fussiness, I would have ordered 2TB, but since it isn't upgradeable I ordered 4TB. That made someone's numbers at apple like $400 better at least. And it would probably be better for me financially to wait 4-5 years until I really needed 4TB before upgrading (if I ever needed to, which I might not). Same thin…

FWIW, a 4TB SSD with the same speed (7GB/sec) is currently $1200 ($750 more than the 2TB). So Apple's price is decent for the current market. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Q54GHTC/ I'm certainly not enthused about being stuck with current market capacities, but at least I don't feel gouged on price.

Yeah but I don't need a 4TB SSD right now. I barely need a 2TB.

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

#310

Post by int_19h »

kube-system wrote: post #229
userbinator wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and that's the second problem they created.

Disaster recovery is not a backup, nor should it supersede physical security in importance. Time Machine solves all of these problems.

For the vast majority of home users, disaster recovery does supersede physical security in importance.
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