https://eclecticlight.co/2021/02/10/external-boot-disks-still-dont-work-properly-with-m1-macs/ Skip to content [eclecticlight] The Eclectic Light Company Macs, painting, and more Main navigation Menu * Downloads * M1 Macs * Mac Problems * Mac articles * Art * Macs * Painting hoakley February 10, 2021 Macs, Technology External boot disks still don't work properly with M1 Macs [bootextdisk01] When running Big Sur 11.1 on an M1 Mac, making a bootable external disk is entirely unpredictable. Some users seem to have all the luck, and the first external SSD they connect to their M1 Mac works fine with the Big Sur installer, and they don't look back. For others, the macOS installer just can't do the trick, and a high-quality SSD is left unbootable. Now that Big Sur can be updated to 11.2, I've been looking at how that affects external boot disks, and whether it finally enables them all to work. However, far from 11.2 solving this problem, it actually makes it worse. Making a new external boot disk As far as I can tell, macOS 11.2 is no less unreliable at this than was 11.1. Using the 11.2 full installer app, the one SSD (Samsung X5) that worked for me before works still, and the SSD which wouldn't take a bootable installation of 11.1 still won't oblige. The problem occurs at the end of the normal installation phase, when presumably the installer is writing hashes up the Merkle tree, with the installer window claiming that there's only About a minute remaining. At that stage, Activity Monitor reports that com.apple.MobileSoftwareUpdate.UpdateBrainService is taking lots of CPU, and there's sustained and intense disk activity for many minutes. When that finally completes, instead of the Mac restarting from the external disk to complete installation, the installer just quits. Trying to restart from the external disk then results in an error. bootextdisk01 Updating a bootable external disk to 11.2 As Apple hasn't provided an update installer for 11.2, the logical way to update an existing bootable 11.1 external disk is to restart from it, and run Software Update. This didn't work at all, as each attempt to start up from 11.1 on the external disk resulted in a boot loop kernel panic. The M1 Mac started to boot from the external disk, before the display went black for a while. It then tried again, and again, until I forced the Mac to shut down by holding the Power button in. The only way that I could get that M1 Mac mini to start up successfully was by forcing shutdown uing the Power button, disconnecting the external disk, starting up in Recovery Options, and there setting it to start up from the internal disk. The kernel panic was apparently because it "cannot find IOAESAccelerator", which doesn't seem to relate to the name of any system file. Installing 11.2 over 11.1 Given that I couldn't boot from the external disk, my next step was to try installing 11.2 to it. This failed late during the installation, with the common installation error that ownership of the disk couldn't be set. Wiping and installing 11.2 afresh bootextdisk02 The only option left now was to start from scratch and format the external disk using Disk Utility, then install a fresh copy of 11.2 on it. This eventually worked, but only after encountering further problems. During installation, I elected to copy account settings from my internal SSD, but this failed because "This Mac can't be used to migrate data". Additionally, I was informed that "Due to an issue with unlocking this system, you can't migrate. Please update this Mac and retry." bootextdisk03 I therefore had to create a new user on the external disk, but was puzzled when that user had to have a different user long and short username. Later I discovered that the migrated user account had been created after all. The bootable external disk therefore now has two admin users: one copied from the internal SSD, the other created afresh. That said, my Samsung X5 is at last a bootable external SSD running Big Sur 11.2. It also appears reliable switching to and fro using the Startup Disk pane. Conlusions Big Sur 11.2 does nothing to make it easier to make external disks bootable. Some SSDs work, others don't, and it seems a gamble as to which will work with any given M1. It doesn't appear possible to update a bootable external disk, only to format it and install a fresh system, as if the disk had never had macOS installed before. The 11.2 full installer is incapable of copying existing account settings from the internal SSD to a fresh installation of 11.2. M1 Macs currently don't work reliably with bootable external disks. Users who want to boot from an external disk would be wise not to buy an M1 model, until Apple has fixed these problems completely. Postscript With the release of 11.2.1, I have tried to update my bootable external SSD from 11.2 to 11.2.1. This fails repeatedly after performing a full download of the update, merely reporting that "some updates couldn't be installed". It's thus still impossible to update a bootable external disk: the only solution is to perform a complete format and install. As the 11.2.1 full installer isn't yet available through softwareupdate, that too will fail to deliver an update from 11.2. Share this: * Twitter * Facebook * Reddit * Pinterest * Email * Print * Like this: Like Loading... Related Posted in Macs, Technology and tagged Apple silicon, Big Sur, disk, external drive, M1, macOS 11, SSD. Bookmark the permalink. 15Comments Add yours 1. 1 [60c0a04809a2] EcleX on February 10, 2021 at 8:53 am Reply Thanks the the useful article. Hopefully, Apple will fix these serious productivity bugs soon. LikeLiked by 2 people 2. 2 [0565f769b775] Christian on February 10, 2021 at 9:22 am Reply Same problem here, had to sudo nvram -c in order to proceed. Nevertheless - M1 mini went back to Apple. LikeLiked by 1 person 3. 3 [163e1c4110b5] Annoyed Apple User on February 10, 2021 at 10:55 am Reply To be honest, did Apple stroke the QC in their supply chain? On every new day I read about new bugs in apple software, and rarely also hardware. LikeLiked by 1 person 4. 4 [2e194e3f9d73] moseskravitz on February 10, 2021 at 2:22 pm Reply You've captured almost exactly what I went through I eventually returned the 8/250 and sprung for a 8/500 so I didn't need to rely on an external I probably would have bought a 8/1TB but Best Buy didn't have those readily available Apple is backed up 2-3 weeks on almost everything LikeLiked by 1 person 5. 5 [ce84dd569eca] VogonP on February 10, 2021 at 5:25 pm Reply I Have a ASUS Tuf laptop(AMD Ryzen 3550H/Radeon RX 560X Discrete GPU) that will not boot from the M.2/NVM SSD(Western digital "Black" Branded SSD) in Liunx Mint 20.0! That is until the grub boot menu is edited to include: nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500 that's edited in after the Quiet Splash in that line in the Grub boot settings! So maybe that's the sort of issue you are having but your external drive is communicating via USB Protocol(?) maybe to some SSD interface that's abstracted maybe! But that laptop will not boot Linux Mint without that Grub edit in place and I have a Live Mint 20.1(HWE Linux Kernel 5.8 "Edge") ISO that has to have that edit hand typed in every time if I need to make use of the Live USB Mint 20/1 ISO Image for Grub boot repairs on other such fixing of things! But SSDs are problematic for *nix like OSs sometimes as the SSD's makers tend to only test for Windows compatibility! LikeLiked by 1 person + 6 [6986a746f627] hoakley on February 10, 2021 at 5:46 pm Reply Thank you. Unfortunately, Big Sur and M1 Macs are very very different from Linux. Howard. LikeLike o 7 [d88e37fd74e6] Richie on February 12, 2021 at 11:52 am He didn't say Linux, he said *nix like OSes, of which macOS is one. LikeLiked by 1 person o 8 [6986a746f627] hoakley on February 12, 2021 at 2:03 pm Thank you. Looking again at that comment, it is almost entirely about Linux, and only attempts to make a generalisation to "*nix like OSs" in the final sentence. It there attributes these problems to SSD manufacturers for not testing compatibility with operating systems other than Windows, a claim which isn't supported at all by the observations given for Linux, where a variable had to be set in "the grub boot menu", which isn't common to "*nix like OSs" as far as I'm aware, but Linux-specific. As I wrote, macOS doesn't work like this. Not only is there no "grub boot menu", but users can't set preferences for low-level control over external SSDs in this way. Support for external SSDs in macOS is very different from that, and isn't in my experience dependent on whether an SSD manufacturer tests with macOS or not. SSD incompatibility with macOS is very rare, and I've never heard of anyone working around it with a user setting. Finally, the comment refers to booting from an external SSD. As written clearly in the article, there is no problem booting from the SSD, it's a problem updating macOS on that SSD. So even if macOS did have something akin to a "the grub boot menu", what difference could that make? Howard. LikeLike 6. 9 [4acc8b9b53cf] chrisnet224 on February 10, 2021 at 6:21 pm Reply Are you able to boot in recovery mode and then install on external drive from there? And bonus points for trying that with the internet recovery choice. LikeLiked by 1 person + 10 [6986a746f627] hoakley on February 10, 2021 at 6:32 pm Reply I suspect so. However, that only installs the whole of the current version of Big Sur. It has no ability to update an existing system, so it doesn't unfortunately help. Howard. LikeLike 7. 11 Michael Tsai - Blog - Booting an M1 Mac From an External Disk on February 10, 2021 at 8:49 pm Reply [...] Update (2021-02-10): Howard Oakley: [...] LikeLike 8. 12 [b40de02e6315] Ken Adler on February 12, 2021 at 3:00 pm Reply Returning my brand new M1 today.... after spending your trying to get it to stop crashing. Basically, bricked. PITA LikeLiked by 1 person + 13 [6986a746f627] hoakley on February 12, 2021 at 4:11 pm Reply I'm sorry that you had problems. Were those kernel panics? Did you ever identify what was causing the problems? Howard. LikeLike 9. 14 [e66f3ec47a1c] Joey Jay on February 12, 2021 at 4:39 pm Reply Thank you for the update article on this issue and your continued testing. It really is a great mental relief to me to know that I am not alone and that I'm not overlooking something silly like the power in my house causing it all or that I may have been trying to use what I thought was a Thunderbolt 3 cable but was really only USB-C. You never know with this stuff. You managed to exactly duplicate my experiences and tests, so now I know this is on Apple. Also you have a great blog here, so add me to your list of growing fans. LikeLiked by 1 person + 15 [6986a746f627] hoakley on February 12, 2021 at 6:05 pm Reply Thank you. I have more - including some good news - on Sunday morning. Howard. 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