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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

#311

Post by GhettoComputers »

dsana wrote: post #308

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 di…

Never had any SSD fail in my life ever. This is a worry for some, but its not a realistic fear. You can write TB daily to most SSDs and it'll still not wear out. What's your current SSD's usage written in S.M.A.R.T.?

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

#312

Post by VortexDream »

asddubs wrote: post #97
VortexDream wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Both. SSDs also fail (yes, it's true). I'm not sure why people seem to think they last forever or that they never fail. They do not last forever. They do fail.

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

#313

Post by crvdgc »

xondono wrote: post #109

I get that for people from IT it sounds surprising, but from a hardware perspective I would say it’s a good change. Instead of having a SPI flash memory with the firmware they’ve gone ahead and merged that into a single flash memory. It’s weird because we are used to see disks as independent modules, but for these devices that’s simply a useless distinction, something that we keep for legacy reasons, not because it p…

Isn't the case described here the exact reason to keep the separation? To prevent a single point of failure?

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

#314

Post by wtallis »

rsync wrote: post #232
1123581321 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Any modern SSD should be good for a few hundred to several hundred TB and may reach a PB." Actually, even more than that - here are some examples:[1] Intel SSDSC2KB019TZ01 ("S4520") with 8.8 PB of lifetime writes Intel SSDSC2KB019T801 ("S4510") with 7.1 PB of lifetime writes Seagate ZA1920NM10001 ("Ironwolf[2] 110") with 3.5 PB of lifetime writes [2] Samsung MZ-76P2T0BW ("860 PRO") with 2.4 PB of lifetime writes [1]…

To be fair, those are unusually high-end products compared to typical consumer SSDs, and three out of four are enterprise drives where endurance is measured according to different criteria that inflates the number a bit further.

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

#315

Post by zshift »

funnyflamigo wrote: post #44
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…

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…

The only issues I’ve run into with older laptops are limited wifi speed/range, the inability to decode HD video streams efficiently, and battery life, which is mostly solved by a new battery, though efficiency isn’t always great with older devices.

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

#316

Post by GhettoComputers »

zshift wrote: post #315
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…

The only issues I’ve run into with older laptops are limited wifi speed/range, the inability to decode HD video streams efficiently, and battery life, which is mostly solved by a new battery, though efficiency isn’t always great with older devices.

The heat is terrible too. You had no heat issues? All the laptops I had will cook you alive if you tried using them on your lap.

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

#317

Post by GhettoComputers »

formerly_proven wrote: post #282
GhettoComputers wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never had to replace either, although I don't want them non replacable. External/cloud storage can take care of space, and memory corruption is a fear, but nothing I worry about, batteries are worst than both combined.

I don't think I ever had a single machine where I stayed with the storage it came with. As for memory, DRAM doesn't really have a particularly long lifetime (iirc design life is something like 75k hours), and that certainly shows in servers - memory modules start to fail a lot after the four year mark. And here I don't think I ever had a machine where I didn't upgrade memory at least once.

Mine came with a 500GB SSD, the older one I had I swapped it since it came with an HDD. I never had computer ram ever fail me, ever in my lifetime, have you? Unless you bought it with low specs, it isn't useful is it? I'd add ram to low spec computers, but my current one came with one slot and 8GB, no change to it for me.

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

#318

Post by GhettoComputers »

wtallis wrote: post #314
rsync wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Any modern SSD should be good for a few hundred to several hundred TB and may reach a PB." Actually, even more than that - here are some examples:[1] Intel SSDSC2KB019TZ01 ("S4520") with 8.8 PB of lifetime writes Intel SSDSC2KB019T801 ("S4510") with 7.1 PB of lifetime writes Seagate ZA1920NM10001 ("Ironwolf[2] 110") with 3.5 PB of lifetime writes [2] Samsung MZ-76P2T0BW ("860 PRO") with 2.4 PB of lifetime writes [1]…

To be fair, those are unusually high-end products compared to typical consumer SSDs, and three out of four are enterprise drives where endurance is measured according to different criteria that inflates the number a bit further.

Those numbers aren't out of reach for consumer SSDs either.

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

#319

Post by dsana »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #311
dsana wrote: post #308

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 di…

Never had any SSD fail in my life ever. This is a worry for some, but its not a realistic fear. You can write TB daily to most SSDs and it'll still not wear out. What's your current SSD's usage written in S.M.A.R.T.?

You're misunderstanding. It's not about the wear. It's about failure of the SSD. Any failure.

I've had a SSD fail and it was covered under warranty. Wasn't wear related and it was barely used. A month or so old.

So yeah, SSD failure is realistic for me as an issue.

YMMV

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

#320

Post by losvedir »

Chocola wrote: post #207
notimetorelax wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe because not everyone likes to share their most important files with a third party? Or because of providers scanning files or stuff like: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

Then use tarsnap or Arq or some other client that encrypts locally and backs up the encrypted files to the cloud.
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