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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

#51

Post by pantalaimon »

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Silly idea in tech, the hardware will be long outdated before someone look for parts which are going to be overpriced, and the company might be gone forever.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…

> People aren’t swapping their 2011 i3 for a 2011 i7 if they care about performance

I beg to differ. I swapped my 2011 i5-2500k for a 2012 i7-3770 and it was a nice and cheap upgrade.

Used hardware is cheap, there is no reason to not upgrade it all the way.

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

#53

Post by narraturgy »

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Silly idea in tech, the hardware will be long outdated before someone look for parts which are going to be overpriced, and the company might be gone forever.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…

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?

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

#54

Post by jaywalk »

varispeed wrote: post #27
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…

If you can't buy parts from 3rd parties e.g. you can't source chips or connectors etc. on Mouser, then I can't see how this is much different from Apple. Just because manufacturer sells parts themselves (thus avoiding spending money on good repair service), probably won't save you much money considering you will have to spend your own time and make effort to fix it yourself. Nonetheless, any move into more repair fri…

Framework's hardware is entirely open source (https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards) so you can buy parts from any third-party that wants to produce them.

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

#55

Post by liminalsunset »

asdff wrote: post #39
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…

This seems like a failure on a part of M1 systems rather than the T2 chip. I have an intel Macbook Air with the T2 chip for touchid, and I have a bootcamp partition that I boot off of via an external ssd over usb3 no problem.

I think the article is talking about when the internal drive is physically damaged/not working, and not just simple USB booting. USB booting is definitely supported on M1 Macs since I did it last week, but I don't have a machine with an actually broken SSD to test with.

It can be observed that even T2 systems will fail to power up the Intel CPU system if the BridgeOS cannot be read properly. The system will only power up the T2 until it is reflashed through Apple Configurator.

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

#56

Post by garaetjjte »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #4

I'd be curious what Marcan (Asahi Linux founder/hacker) would have to say about this. Perhaps there's a workaround?

>In fact, they do not support external boot disks at all, by design.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26114417

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

#57

Post by Twisell »

rvz wrote: post #18

Unsurprising. Given the countless times I have warned about the risks of going 'all in' on an Apple Silicon Mac and now they realise. Good luck with your files if the internal hard drive is dead. Consider creating regular backups otherwise your can say goodbye to your files. No thanks and absolutely no deal to that.

I can't see any scenario on any hardware in which I would not strongly advise to make regular backups.

Beside theses laptop are designed to be used (if configured so) with full disk encryption using a strong key stored inside a secure enclave on the cpu. If something is amiss the data is lost, they could almost say it's a feature (but they probably won't as is would be seen as a bug by the majority of people hence this thread).

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

#58

Post by GhettoComputers »

varispeed wrote: post #27
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…

If you can't buy parts from 3rd parties e.g. you can't source chips or connectors etc. on Mouser, then I can't see how this is much different from Apple. Just because manufacturer sells parts themselves (thus avoiding spending money on good repair service), probably won't save you much money considering you will have to spend your own time and make effort to fix it yourself. Nonetheless, any move into more repair fri…

They do have good repair as well. It saves you a ton of money because the devices are so common and the parts are cheap, I don’t go to Lenovo.com, I buy some junk devices and take the parts off them.

You’re stating effort like it’s hard to unscrew a laptop and seat in a new part, which you’ll need to do for framework too.

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

#59

Post by bastardoperator »

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.

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

#60

Post by darrenf »

Milner08 wrote: post #15
gameswithgo wrote: post #7

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

If only they were available in the UK

I'm in the UK too, finding myself unwilling to pay the new Mac prices and getting impatient for the framework. So, recently I've been considering a StarBook Mk V from https://starlabs.systems/

They publish a full disassembly guide[0], so I'm reasonably sure the whole thing is repairable and upgradable if necessary. Lots of options for custom build at order time including coreboot. I'm a bit hesitant about a 1920x1080 display but otherwise extremely tempted.

[0] https://support.starlabs.systems/kb/guides/starbook-mk-v-com...

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