[HN Gopher] External boot disks still don't work properly with M...
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External boot disks still don't work properly with M1 Macs
Author : zdw
Score : 181 points
Date : 2021-02-10 15:40 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (eclecticlight.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (eclecticlight.co)
| evgen wrote:
| Some options/ides from the team that does the SuperDuper backup
| and disk dupe tool:
| https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/thats_...
| louwrentius wrote:
| Even on an Intel Mini, USB-C boot takes much longer than internal
| boot, seemingly due to Apple shenanigans.
|
| I have worked with External SSDs on Macs for years. Partially
| because to circumvent the Apple Price Tax.
|
| But also to just treat storage as something easy to swap.
| cletus wrote:
| I don't use an external boot disk but I certainly understand why
| people do. And yeah this needs to be fixed.
|
| But is anyone else shocked at how well the transition to ARM has
| gone for Apple? Because I am. I figured this would be something I
| would avoid as long as possible but honestly I'd probably be
| happy with this year's MBP M1 refresh.
| whatthesmack wrote:
| > But is anyone else shocked at how well the transition to ARM
| has gone for Apple?
|
| I totally get why some folks would want to wait for the next-
| gen of these initial machines, but I'm not surprised at how
| well it's gone.
|
| I chose to buy the initial M1 MacBook Air model right-off-the-
| bat. The reason for this is that I went through the last two
| Mac CPU arch transitions (68k -> PPC, PPC -> x86), and the way
| Apple was able to handle those was truly impressive to me. Plus
| I really needed more built-in storage ASAP :)
| marcodiego wrote:
| I think we're just a few steps away from having our own devices
| in such a deeply locked state that boot disks will eventually
| stop working on any sufficiently modern system.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| Apple expended a significant amount of resources designing this
| bespoke boot chain so that it _isn 't_ locked down and does in
| fact let users run completely unsigned operating systems (as
| long as they have physical access and give consent with their
| local user credentials). In fact, the design goes further,
| allowing individual installed OSes to have different security
| levels, thus allowing users to get the benefits of _both_ a
| completely opened up OS install and a fully Apple-vetted,
| secureboot install.
|
| They aren't going to backtrack on all that. That'd be silly.
|
| So please stop the FUD about Apple locking their devices down;
| this is a Mac, not an iPhone :-)
| my123 wrote:
| It's just a set of bugs here, because of it using a redesigned
| boot chain. The bugs will be fixed, just takes some time.
|
| Has nothing to do with trying to impose additional
| restrictions.
| marcodiego wrote:
| > Has nothing to do with trying to impose additional
| restrictions.
|
| For now, maybe. Consider the time when microsoft was
| partially successful to boot-lock arm devices: https://www.so
| ftwarefreedom.org/blog/2012/jan/12/microsoft-c...
|
| The old adage "do not assign to malice what can be properly
| explained by stupidity" should not be blindly applied when it
| involves powerful companies.
| machello13 wrote:
| IMO this line of thinking implies a lack of contextual
| understanding about Apple's culture, strategy, and history.
| Of course we can never predict 100% what big companies will
| do, but we can be pretty sure Apple isn't interested in
| doing that.
| my123 wrote:
| I can assure you here that it works on some drives but not
| others because the boot chain on Apple Silicon Macs is
| written from scratch, not using UEFI.
|
| Bugs are being worked out slowly, and there's no reason to
| assume bad intentions here. (I have an Apple M1 MacBook
| Air, and it boots from a Samsung T7 external SSD just fine)
| bitcharmer wrote:
| No, it's just Apple. The rest of the world doesn't do this
| nonsense.
| coldtea wrote:
| The rest of the world doesn't care about security?
| ant6n wrote:
| I can boot all other arm devices with usb? Huh, maybe I'll
| get an android phone and chromebook after all.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Is there something in ARM that prevents booting from
| external disks? What about Raspberry Pi?
| ant6n wrote:
| Nah. Just that most manufacturers sell the devices in
| such a deeply locked state that boot disks are not
| supported.
|
| Though ARM appears to be missing an open-spec BIOS/Boot
| standard like x86 has.
| floatboth wrote:
| SBSA-compliant systems boot with UEFI+ACPI. Server
| customers care about standardization, so boot was made
| "boring" and basically identical to x86.
|
| It's just the embedded junk (which includes Apple) that
| doesn't care. Apple has vertical integration, they only
| care about the full experience including their own OS.
| Embedded SoC vendors only care about having some "BSP"
| fork of Linux because that is enough to make a crappy
| device with it. There's just, unfortunately, zero
| motivation for these vendors to embrace standards.
| breakingcups wrote:
| Through stupidity _and_ malice.
| michelb wrote:
| This may be fine for the current M1 macs, since they are most
| likely not used by professionals or people that will do
| potentially installation damaging things, so a trip to the Apple
| Store will suffice. But this better work once the pro machines
| come out. It's already hard to recover data from the newer mac's
| when your system installation has issues, not being able to boot
| from another drive is going to suck.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| The pro machines are allready out. You can buy a Macbook pro M1
| right now.
| coldtea wrote:
| Parent doesn't mean machines with "Pro" in their branding
| name, they mean the models actually used by technical/cpu-
| demanding pros in video/graphic design/audio/3d/etc. (non
| technical/cpu-demanding professionals, e.g. some office
| working just needing web and excel, can use Macbook Air or
| whatever too).
|
| And those aren't out yet, those would be the 16 MBP, the Mac
| Pro, the iMac and iMac Pro, and so on.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| You can also use the "MacBook Air or whatever" to compile
| code just as fast [1] as the 16" MBP.
|
| If that isn't a cpu-demanding task then I don't know what
| is.
|
| (not trying to be rude, just that the Air is currently a
| very capable and pro-tier machine)
|
| [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/17/apple-
| silicon-m1-compil...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Those kinds of professionals won't be comparing it to
| other MacBooks, but to other computers of the same form
| factor. The M1 Macs still aren't the leader in multicore
| performance or multicore performance per watt.
|
| If you're a programmer that mostly relies on multicore
| performance, the current M1 Macs aren't the gold
| standard. Unless of course you are drawn to the OS or
| something else.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Those kinds of professionals won 't be comparing it to
| other MacBooks, but to other computers of the same form
| factor._
|
| Not really, since most of those kinds of professionals
| concerned already used Intel Macbooks. It's not like
| they're gonna win the "build some tower yourself crowd".
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The new AMD Ryzen 5000 series laptops are faster
| multicore than the M1 MacBooks. I'm not comparing towers,
| a powerful desktop computer would absolutely murder an M1
| MacBook in multicore, it wouldn't even be close.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Can you send me a link of a ryzen 5000 laptop with the
| same form factor? All of them I know are either >14
| inches or are much thicker.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Sure, if you're looking for the form-factor of a MacBook
| Air, there are quite a few. For example, the Lenovo 14p
| lineup, but there are many others.
|
| Depending on where you live, there may be some supply
| issues, especially if you are looking for a model with an
| NVidia 3000 series GPU.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| That's not really the same form factor. It's at least 20%
| heavier and much more thick and larger. The same form
| factor would be something like a Dell XPS 13 or surface
| pro. But those are not offered with Ryzen CPUs.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It is less than 10% heavier (1.4kg vs 1.29kg) and is
| 0.9mm thicker. It is about 22mm wider and 6mm deeper,
| with a screen 18mm larger in diagonal.
|
| Unless you're _really_ being pedantic the two are of the
| same form factor. Maybe you are comparing the Intel
| ThinkBook 14? That one is significantly heavier and a bit
| thicker.
|
| If an increase in size of around 5% is too much, there
| are smaller laptops with the same processor family.
| [deleted]
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Which computer in the same form factor as the air is as
| capable or better? All of them are throttling messes. AMD
| is better then Intel but they still throttle.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The high end Ryzen 5000 series processors even when
| throttled to their lowest continuous speed still
| outperform the M1 Macs in multicore. Having twice the
| cores makes a huge difference.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| But why not call out the specific niche then? Pro does not
| equal high demands. And audio has very different demands
| then 3D work for example. In fact for audio work the M1 is
| perfect hardware wise.
| coldtea wrote:
| There are pros that don't even need a computer.
|
| We're talking here about pros in the context of
| "increased hardware demands".
|
| This has little to do with "Pro" in the product name or
| not, nor with them being more professional than other
| working people.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| The M1 Macbook pro is better then the 16 inch intel
| Macbook pro. I'm not sure it gets more "pro" then this.
| samatman wrote:
| For Apple, the core of "pro" is audiovisual
| professionals.
|
| I mean, really, it just means "the expensive one", as in
| AirPods Pro, but sticking to Macs for a second: if your
| job is video editing, or publishing, the bigger and nicer
| screen is going to trump a faster processor and better
| battery life. The (much) better speakers are also a big
| plus.
|
| Smart users in that category are holding off new
| purchases, if they possibly can, until the M2
| (presumably) 16" MBPs drop. Especially if the rumors hold
| and it comes with an onboard SD card reader.
| michelb wrote:
| The M1 is fine for a lot of workloads but the current M1
| macs are not suitable for heavy work. Regarding niches;
| video work, audio work, ML, compiling stuff larger than
| simple projects, etc. The current M1 macs start to break
| down on a lot of medium sized workloads due a lack of
| RAM. So in my view, pro machine = >32gb ram, better gpu
| performance, better multicore performance.
| shawnz wrote:
| You can simply boot to the internet-based recovery image and
| reinstall or access your data from there, so there is no
| concern about trashing your installation.
|
| Furthermore I don't see any reason to think that OP's issues
| are to do with the hardware or that we will have to wait for
| the next hardware model to have these issues resolved. It seems
| like a simple OS-level software bug to me.
| philistine wrote:
| Oh i did trash my installation. I somehow didn't have
| permissions to reinstall from internet recovery. I had to
| plus another Mac and use Configurator to restore it.
| shawnz wrote:
| Try erasing all the existing volumes and create a new one
| before starting the installation next time. That sounds
| like the message you would get if you are trying to install
| onto the recovery partition.
|
| EDIT: According to other posts there are in fact some
| volumes on M1 Macs where if deleted, you will need to do a
| DFU mode recovery. So perhaps don't actually delete all
| existing volumes on an M1
| marcan_42 wrote:
| The M1 boot process is _very_ different from Intel macs. In fact,
| they do not support external boot disks at all, by design. This
| is because the built-in firmware is extremely minimal, and does
| not contain drivers for anything but the internal SSD. It doesn
| 't even have a keyboard driver, or any kind of GUI other than
| showing the Apple logo and "Entering startup options" text, and
| some error screens. All of this is by design, for security - UEFI
| is an enormous hairball of code, especially on Intel macs, and
| almost impossible to secure properly for that reason.
|
| When you boot into the "Startup Options" menu, you are booting
| into a special macOS partition in the internal SSD. M1 Macs use
| macOS as the moral equivalent of the UEFI setup menu. That boot
| picker that looks like the UEFI boot picker on Intel Macs? Yeah,
| that's a full-screen app on macOS made to look similar.
|
| So how does external boot work?
|
| The "blessing" process done by the Startup Options screen
| involves copying the entire macOS Preboot partition - iBoot2 OS
| loader, Darwin kernel, auxiliary CPU/device firmwares, device
| tree, and some additional stuff - to the internal SSD. It then
| creates a local, signed boot policy that allows system firmware
| to boot this macOS install.
|
| You aren't booting from an external disk. You are booting from
| the internal SSD, with the root filesystem on the external disk.
|
| Additionally, the integration of the macOS user credentials with
| the SEP means that you can't "just" take an install made on
| another machine and use it on a separate one. It involves
| importing user credentials into the local machine. This process
| isn't implemented properly yet.
|
| As you might expect, this entire mechanism introduces a ton of
| corner cases around updates, boot selection, etc., and it is
| still very buggy and broken. The M1 launch was, when you look at
| details such as this, very obviously rushed.
|
| Further reading for those interested:
|
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/SW:Boot
| https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/SW%3AStorage
|
| I'm actually eagerly waiting for Apple to fix this in future
| system firmware releases, because my plan for installing Asahi
| Linux for end users with a minimal amount of fuss is to abuse the
| mechanism to adopt foreign macOS installations. This elides the
| current need to have a completely wasted, 60+GB macOS install as
| a dummy to actually launch Linux (we could clean it up and resize
| it to get the space back, but it still makes for a very annoying
| install process that I'm hoping to avoid).
|
| On the plus side, this dual-booting mechanism is very cleverly
| designed to separately secure _different_ OSes, so you do not
| need to downgrade security on your machine to install an unsigned
| OS like Linux. It is a separate OS with a separate security
| policy. You can keep your macOS install fully secure, and capable
| of running iOS apps and other actions that require secureboot,
| and install Linux (or another macOS with a custom kernel, kexts,
| etc) in parallel, completely unintrusively. So kudos to Apple for
| designing this whole thing, and for opening it up for us to use
| :)
| spijdar wrote:
| > You aren't booting from an external disk. You are booting
| from the internal SSD, with the root filesystem on the external
| disk.
|
| So this means that the life of all M1 Macs is locked to the
| life of the internal storage, as the (inevitable) drive failure
| will render the whole computer unusable?
| db48x wrote:
| Except presumably for replacement with identical hardware.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| Yes. This is also the case for just about every other
| computer out there, as chances are most PCs will end up
| writing to UEFI variables on every boot for something or
| other anyway, and those are stored in Flash memory too, which
| has a finite endurance. That should be NOR flash, which
| should have higher endurance than the NAND in SSDs - but we
| also don't have any numbers on Apple's SSD endurance, so it
| would be premature to speculate that this is going to be a
| real problem in non-pathological use cases, and that the
| machine won't in practice die first of other causes.
|
| Strictly speaking, the things can boot off of DFU (USB device
| mode) too, but to make that useful for regular boot you need
| to ask Apple, as currently you cannot boot a normal OS like
| that as far as I know, only their signed restore bundles
| (which is how you fix an M1 Mac if you wipe the SSD).
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Would it be possible to replace the internal SSD? Possibly
| by setting some laxer security policy before the original
| one dies?
| plussed_reader wrote:
| Very do-able on 2015 MacbookPros; can't imagine it's that
| different on the M1 mobo.
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| I am certain the internal SSD is soldered on--I believe
| the whole M1 motherboard is an SOC.
| spijdar wrote:
| While technically speaking yes, eventually the firmware
| flash will fail, I'm not sure bad UEFI variables will
| actually prevent the system from booting, since the rest of
| firmware should be fine. I've gotten systems to boot with
| totally borked UEFI flash space.
|
| It is being nitpicky on my part, but I think we're reaching
| the point where these machines could be expected to last
| long enough for SSD weardown to become a real issue, even
| with current flash tech. While this has theoretically been
| a problem for the past 5 years now, it's a bit
| disappointing to learn that now you can't use an external
| drive in the event of the (irreplaceable) internal drive
| failing.
| floatboth wrote:
| Raw EDK2 doesn't really need variables at all (in fact if
| you use it as a coreboot payload, persistentce is not
| implemented whatsoever, at least as of.. some time ago).
|
| Various crap bolted on by AMI and the OEMs... well, YMMV
| - remember these laptops where someone did rm -rf with
| mounted efivarfs on Linux and that _bricked_ it because
| it just refused to boot without the variables :D
| spijdar wrote:
| I can believe that sadly :/ UEFI implementations range
| from pretty good to absolute crap. My newest Dell has at
| least been mostly decent, but an older Dell has so many
| issues with the firmware, it's unbelievable.
|
| Not that it (worn out flash) is gonna be a problem in
| practice, anyway. Neither will the M1's inability to boot
| without the internal drive. Like Marcan said, it's not
| really likely to die in realistic use within a pretty
| long lifespan, I just find these sorts of
| shortcomings/regressions ... disappointing. I get the
| various reasons _why_ , it's just annoying.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| That depends on the implementation. For example, I've
| seen many PCs exhibit a behavior where after a major
| hardware change, usually CPU or RAM, the system boots,
| shuts down, then boots again automatically. Presumably
| after discovering the change it wrote some variables
| describing it, then rebooted. Without the ability to
| persist that information, I would expect it to loop
| forever.
| s_dev wrote:
| External SSD is my default setup. I encourage it in the office as
| well. Even my gaming machine is setup at home this way. When
| popping over a mates I often just plug it out and stick it in to
| their machine.
|
| It's very useful to be able to seperate data from the hardware.
| If something is wrong with a machine I can just plug straight in
| to another one. An SSD is much easier to carry than a laptop.
|
| The other problem with internal hard drives is when they get
| stuck inside e.g. with MacBooks being sealed these days. External
| SSDs can offer great flexibility and a trade off worth
| considering. I can imagine people having security concerns etc.
|
| Disappointing to hear this about the new M1s.
|
| I recommend people interested in dipping their toes into Linux
| Gaming trying this approach:
|
| https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/
|
| https://rufus.ie/
| suyash wrote:
| I've been using external disk as my main macOS too and the only
| downside is the worry cable would snap out which it did a few
| times when I moved laptop around and crashed everything. Other
| than that, great way to upgrade my MBP with 1TB disk without
| needing to buy new MBP.
| sirius87 wrote:
| Folks doing this need to be careful not to plug their disk into
| a machine with a different OS.
|
| If the disk is plugged into an already booted system and the OS
| doesn't recognize the filesystem format, I believe macOS and
| Windows display a prompt to format the disk, which someone may
| accidentally click.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _When popping over a mates I often just plug it out and stick
| it in to their machine._
|
| This was one of the touted technical uses for the first
| (Firewire) iPod. Apple had a notion that people could carry an
| iPod with them, and then boot any Mac from it and start working
| right where they left off.[1] This is why Xserves had a
| Firewire port on the front.
|
| [1] As a point of interest, this used to also exist in the
| radio industry. Certain brands of control boards had
| "personality cards" that could be tuned[2] to a particular D.J.
| Then when the D.J. had to work from another studio, or
| remotely, he could pop his personality card into the control
| board and it would be preset to him.
|
| [2] And by "tuned," that meant tuned for his voice[3], to make
| it sound the way he, or his program director, wanted it to
| sound.
|
| [3] Even more interesting: Though these were circuit boards,
| the tuning was done mechanically, and by hand. They were a
| series of potentiometers covering different frequency ranges.
| grishka wrote:
| Oh the glorious offline-first software and hardware. I miss
| it. Today this would've been handled through "the cloud",
| requiring an account, a consent to tracking and analytics, a
| monthly subscription, and a reliable high-speed internet
| connection.
| bangonkeyboard wrote:
| "Home on iPod" wasn't a full bootable OS X, just the user's
| Home directory. The feature was also canceled before release,
| likely due to performance or durability limitations of the
| iPod's micro hard drive.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I actually started doing this on my TVs. They have usb ports. I
| bought a 16GB usb stick. And I just did youtub-dl to download a
| bunch of workouts. And then use roku app on the TV to play
| them. Saves time, and no youtube ads.
| tinyhitman wrote:
| What interface do you use (USB/eSATA, etc)?
|
| And you mention gaming setup, assuming windows, is this as
| portable as you make it sound? No weird hardware-dependent
| issues?
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| A couple of years ago I used to run a qemu Linux-
| host/Windows-guest with PCI pass-through for GPU/SSD/etc.
|
| I could either boot the Windows install directly from the
| SSD, or I could boot Linux and then run the same install in
| qemu, without issue.
|
| I think there used to be more problems if you changed the
| hardware too much from the original install. Like, if you
| changed your motherboard (which the above would do of
| course), then you couldn't run the same install. But I don't
| think that's as much of a problem anymore?
|
| This was of course not an external SSD, so I don't know how
| that changes things, if at all.
| tinyhitman wrote:
| Cool! I used to run a similar setup, when I started out I
| passed through the hardware. But when things were running
| smoothly I never booted back into windows natively (Wasn't
| planning on this use-case).
|
| Nice to hear that it is possible. I feel like MS
| essentially gave everyone the wrong idea about OSes dealing
| with hardware changes.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "It's very useful to be able to seperate data from the
| hardware."
|
| I have been doing this for decades, but I do it with USB
| sticks, not SSDs, with NetBSD, not Windows. After boot I can
| pull out the stick, freeing up the USB port for something else.
|
| I would be interested if I coul do the same with Windows but it
| does not seem as straightforward. I know it is _possible_ but I
| also know there is a good chance I would never get it to work.
|
| For example, the EasyUEFI link you provided suggests I need to
| purchase software, the software only runs on Windows, Windows 7
| is not truly portable and the authors are not clued in to the
| idea of separating data from hardware:
|
| "We recommend that you use Hasleo BitLocker Anywhere to encrypt
| Windows To Go drive to keep your data safe. If you want to
| upgrade Windows To Go to Windows 10 October 2020 Update
| (Windows 10 20H2), please go to Windows To Go Upgrader."
|
| If only there was a way I could buy Windows on a stick instead
| of having to buy a computer with pre-installed.
| abc_lisper wrote:
| >>> After boot I can pull out the stick, freeing up the USB
| port for something else
|
| Does this mean the entire OS is loaded into memory? Is this a
| NetBSD thing?
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| A "miniroot" is stored in the kernel, indeed the entire OS
| is loaded into memory. Other BSDs and Linux have used, and
| may still use, similar approaches in some cases. (For
| example, BSD install media.) This is old hat but reliable.
| What is amazing is that you still see people in 2021, when
| most computers have ample amounts of memory, complaning
| about "disk" issues, e.g., people try to use SD cards as a
| "hard drive" for RPis.
| bitwize wrote:
| The Raspberry Pi foundation wants you to use Visual
| Studio Code, which means you want to free up RAM. A file
| system on SD that's mounted read only on boot might be a
| good call, with /home on an external USB.
| bitwize wrote:
| It can be done with Linux or any OS that has a RAM-based
| file system. And with machines coming with gigabytes of
| memory, the installation supported by a RAM FS can be very
| complete indeed. See Puppy Linux as an example of a distro
| that can run from RAM.
| shawnz wrote:
| One of the major advantages of the M1 hardware is that the
| storage controller for the SSD is directly integrated into the
| CPU. You would be losing a big part of that performance
| advantage by using an external OS volume.
| chungus_khan wrote:
| That isn't true. There wouldn't be a performance advantage to
| that at all (the limiting factors in storage performance have
| nothing to do with motherboard trace length, which has a
| negligible impact on performance in general), and the M1 Macs
| have fairly ordinary SSD performance.
| space_rock wrote:
| What about driver differences? Plug into a computer with Nvidia
| card from a computer without...
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| Mac installs support all compatible Mac hardware for that OS
| version.
| stefan_ wrote:
| On x86, that's the reality. I recently went Intel CPU & AMD
| GPU to AMD CPU & Nvidia GPU and just booted straight into my
| old Windows system, no problem at all.
|
| But on anything ARM based? The whole ecosystem _doesn 't give
| a fuck_. Everything is hyperspecific for _one_ platform
| exactly. At one point, the Linux kernel had thousands of
| board source files that specified exactly what hardware your
| cursed ARM board had. Then they invented device tree but
| frankly the situation has barely changed, don 't expect to
| ever build a generic ARM image for anything.
| floatboth wrote:
| You are describing specifically "embedded junk" (which
| includes the M1, sorry Apple) not literally "anything ARM
| based". SBSA-compliant platforms boot with UEFI+ACPI, using
| fully generic DSDT descriptions for PCIe (ECAM) and USB
| (XHCI). Speaking of GPUs, quite common for them to have
| QEMU in firmware to run the x86-compiled EFI GOP driver
| straight from the card's ROM and get video output before
| the OS.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's cheaper to use custom ARM boards than it is to build
| hardware that is SBSA-compliant, so consumers can expect
| that most, if not all, of their ARM devices are not SBSA-
| compliant.
| cehrlich wrote:
| I've never done this, so my concern might be a total non-issue.
|
| But how do you prevent the external SSD accidentally becoming
| unplugged when you're doing this with a laptop? And what would
| actually happen if that did occur?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I do this with a desktop, so the plug thing is a non-issue
| really, but velcro is always an option if you don't care
| about aesthetics.
| sschueller wrote:
| You could get something like this:
| https://www.amazon.com/PCIe-NVMe-Mobile-External-
| Drive/dp/B0...
| aloer wrote:
| I'm using a Samsung t5 via usb c on my MacBook and I'd
| confidently say it's impossible to accidentally unplug. Not
| sure if they made the plug like that on purpose or not but
| it's definitely harder to remove than most other usb c plugs.
| Even after more than a year of use
|
| What I've also seen some companies do is simply duct tape the
| ssd to the laptop lid so they can walk around freely to
| meeting rooms etc.
|
| At home I don't need that
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Are you using it as an external boot drive or just as
| additional storage? I've seen people use it for storage but
| the parent comment is the first I've heard of potentially
| using this as it's own OS..
|
| Perhaps useful for dual-booting between personal and work
| installations, considering MacBooks are sealed with one
| drive?
| aloer wrote:
| Yeah exactly. I had to get my work MacBook repaired a few
| times last year and since I'm working from home I just
| mirrored the internal ssd to the t5 and booted from it on
| my private Mac.
|
| This way I kept all the company settings and programs
| working in a way that a time machine restore couldn't do.
|
| Works just the way you would expect from an internal ssd
| and switching takes less than two minutes if necessary
| ArchOversight wrote:
| My companies MDM software would freak out if I did that.
| So much of it is tied to the specific serial number of
| the machine, as well as various baked in management of
| push notifications for profile updates and the like being
| tied to the device itself through Apple.
| fpoling wrote:
| The duct tape even does not look ugly when you work as it
| is hidden behind the lid.
| s_dev wrote:
| It has happened to me -- you lose your work if it plugs out
| but the drive is nearly always recoverable. Think of it as a
| power outage.
| adrian_b wrote:
| It would be annoying, so you should better avoid that.
|
| Currently this is the weak point of using external bootable
| SSD's. Because of that, I prefer the SSD's where the
| Thunderbolt/USB cable is captive at the SSD end, as then
| there are less connections that can be unplugged
| accidentally.
|
| What I would like is to have in the laptop a CFexpress memory
| card slot.
|
| The CFexpress memory cards have a PCIe electrical interface,
| but they are mechanically identical with the older Sony XQD
| cards, i.e. they are solid, rugged, not flimsy like the SDXC
| memory cards, and they allow a very large number of
| insertion/extraction cycles.
|
| If the laptops would have such card slots and if SSD's would
| be available at a reasonable price in this format, then there
| would not remain any reason to use non-removable SSD's. The
| current CFexpress specification is based on PCIe 3.0, but
| future versions can be updated to PCIe 4.0, like the internal
| M.2 SSD slots of the latest laptops.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| > If the laptops would have such card slots and if SSD's
| would be available at a reasonable price in this format,
| then there would not remain any reason to use non-removable
| SSD's.
|
| A gentle reminder that you live in a world where SSDs on
| some laptops are not removable at all, as are batteries.
| And I'm leaving out minutiae like RAM.
|
| I'm just not seeing it as possible, how would you plan the
| obsolescence of such devices?
| toast0 wrote:
| If it's easier to take your data drive from one laptop to
| the next, it's no longer a end user problem when the
| laptop needs to be thrown away at the end of each season.
|
| Yes, it's a shame you can't charge a 10x markup on the
| storage the end user takes with them, but you can still
| charge a 10x markup on the built in storage that's non-
| removable and whose failure still blocks booting
| (necessitating replacement of the whole thing, naturally)
| dylan604 wrote:
| We're well past having card slots on laptops in the Apple
| realm. Rumor mill suggested possibly getting ports back on
| a refreshed MacBookPro, but I am not holding my breath.
|
| For those not using Apple laptops, this might be a thing,
| but I still doubt it's something manufactures will see a
| lot of demand.
|
| My favorite has been the USB memory sticks that are the
| same physical size as a bluetooth dongle. Since they are so
| low profile, the chances of them coming unplugged are
| pretty damn slim. The only draw back was they are pretty
| small in capacity for trying to run an OS.
| kop316 wrote:
| You are describing something somewhat similar to this:
|
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-
| desktop/updates/sta...
| NathanielK wrote:
| Not quite the same, but there's a product being developed
| to adapt M.2 2242 NVMe drives to Expresscard, the other
| hotpluggable PCIe standard. Most expresscard
| implementations are only a since lane of PCIe v2, though
| some of the new "P" series thinkpads support v3. Being a
| single lane limits it compared CFexpress, but it's still a
| bump over AHCI drives.
|
| Thinkpads up to 2013 also had a tool-less removable disk
| drive that allows for hot swapping 2.5" SATA drives in
| seconds while keeping them safe inside. This has been
| abandoned with the obsolescence of optical drives though.
|
| > The CFexpress memory cards have a PCIe electrical
| interface, but they are mechanically identical with the
| older Sony XQD cards, i.e. they are solid, rugged, not
| flimsy like the SDXC memory cards
|
| I agree, though with SDExpress becoming standard soon there
| is a much realler possibility of future laptops having pcie
| microsd slots, which might be good enough if you can find a
| durable model.
|
| [1] https://thinkmods.store/products/expresscard-to-nvme-
| adapter
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| Wow, I didnt even know these existed, thanks for
| mentioning! Having these CFexpress cards as an option
| instead or next to an SD card reader on laptops would be
| great, for compact backups alone. But looking up details
| and pricing I get a huge DAT vibe: excellent product,
| limited users makes for expensive media and even less
| adoption...
| adrian_b wrote:
| I agree. Already for many years I work almost only on external
| (bootable) SSD's, for exactly the same reasons.
| rock_artist wrote:
| It works nicely if you don't use commercial apps that uses
| device identifiers for activation.
|
| For such scenarios common by media creators external disks fail
| to "just" plug. Some apps uses dongles or allow activating to
| usb sticks. But still it's the exception.
| mobilemidget wrote:
| I can only assume your external disk is encrypted. Does that
| work fine with booting in every machine you tried?
| s_dev wrote:
| I'd only bother to encrypt work machines -- I don't see why
| it wouldn't work. My gaming setup -- I'd definitely not
| bother.
|
| Not every machine is a guaranteed boot. It depends on MBR/GPT
| etc and whether UEFI is disabled in the BIOS and other
| configurations. However generally yes, they will. I've even
| have setups where the SSD would would have
| macOS/Windows/Linux. Much older motherboard pre-2012
| generally don't like this setup and it can be v.slow.
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| I have enough trouble dual-booting encrypted internal disks
| on the same machine... any changes to the TPM, or say
| booting one disk as a virtual machine from within the other
| disks OS running natively, breaks all AAD and windows hello
| authentication for me. Have to remove accounts and add them
| back in from settings on windows 10. So I'd be quite
| surprised if you've figured out a seamless way to boot an
| encrypted disk on multiple machines...
|
| For example, with bitlocker, won't you need to enter the
| recovery key when trying to boot from a new machine? And
| have to sign out and back in to all relevant OS level
| accounts? Even then I face authentication issues at times
|
| I really would like this to work seamlessly because moving
| my internal SSD work disk to an external one would be far
| safer than lugging it around inside my personal laptop all
| the time. But the work disk has to be encrypted...
|
| Also, for hardware compatibility's sake, I'd think Linux
| would be a far superior daily driver OS to 'multi-hardware
| boot', considering relevant drivers are loaded from kernel
| on boot rather than selectively pre-installed at OS
| creation time for that one device, increasing plug and play
| compatibility
| fpoling wrote:
| If you cannot have fully encrypted setup, then you can
| consider encrypting at least most of data.
|
| At work due to remote work I cannot have fully encrypted
| disc with Windows as I have to reboot remotely. So I left
| a small enough partition for Windows, then created
| another partition for my data that I encrypted with
| strong password in Bitlocker. Then I symlinked my user
| directory from C:\Users\UserName to a directory on D: and
| created an extra account that I use after reboot to
| unlock the encrypted disc with my data.
|
| This is not ideal, as Windows still may store my data on
| C:\, but if one disables virtual memory, it is a
| reasonably secure setup.
| codys wrote:
| Bitlocker can be configured (via manage-bde on the
| cmdline, iirc) to use a passphrase and not use the TPM at
| all.
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Yeah for unlocking it within a host OS as a data disk,
| not for booting from it... you can set auto unlock at
| boot or a pin to boot, both of which use the TPM
|
| But try move a bootable bitlocker encrypted disk to new
| hardware and you'll have to enter the recovery key
|
| I would really like to be wrong about this since it would
| make my life much easier, but this understanding is based
| on experience using multiple work machines with encrypted
| boot drives every day :(
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > Yeah for unlocking it within a host OS as a data disk,
| not for booting from it...
|
| this is not true. you can configure bitlocker with or
| without TPMs.
|
| just google it. also the doc for the powershell command
| talks about it in the establishing a key protector
| section
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/powershell/module/bitlocker...
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Oh wow, thank you! Should've known to head straight to
| the docs instead of searching phrases online. Now to
| spend the next day backing everything up and configuring
| passphrase on boot...
| protoman3000 wrote:
| How do you boot Windows from USB without using third party
| tools?
| adrian_b wrote:
| I have no idea. That is why I boot Linux from Thunderbolt or
| USB and for the few Windows programs that I need I use either
| Wine or a Windows VM.
| userbinator wrote:
| Look up WinPE. It's a lightweight "live CD/USB" version of
| Windows that can be run entirely in RAM. A full "portable
| Windows" install can be made from it. AFAIK all the third-
| party tools do is automate the process of copying thousands
| of system files and also act as a boot manager.
| s_dev wrote:
| WinToUSB is $50 but they allow you to do Windows Home and MBR
| partitions for free. Rufus and Disk Utility for Linux/mac OS
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I agree with your reasoning, especially since external SSD have
| made it safer to carry physically as opposed to external HDD.
|
| But I mirror my internal NVMe SSD to external SSD as the
| performance benefits of the former matters for me most of the
| time and when needed bootable external SSD is available at
| disposal.
|
| On macOS(not M1), Carbon Copy Cloner could create bootable
| clones of the disks. But I'm out of macOS for good as changes
| in Big Sur was too much for me, No offense to those who like
| it; but it seemed like a _unicorn poop_ for me. Mojave was the
| last version which preserved the essence of macOS IMHO.
|
| Now I'm back to Linux, hopefully btrfs(snapshots) + Timeshift
| should recreate the same workflow.
| valine wrote:
| What about performance concerns? This sounds unbearably slow,
| especially for someone accustomed to an NVME SSD. Not sure why
| you would do that to yourself when cloud backups are an option.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I have been using for several years bootable Thunderbolt 3
| SSD's (on Linux).
|
| As those are equivalent with 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes, exactly like
| the internal M.2 type M SSD slots, there is no performance
| difference.
|
| Only the latest laptops with Tiger Lake, and the laptops with
| Ryzen 5xxx to be introduced soon, have PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, so
| they will be able to have faster internal SSD's.
|
| I expect that the interconnection standards for external
| devices will also continue to be improved, restoring parity
| with the internal devices.
| 1996 wrote:
| > As those are equivalent with 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes
|
| Can you suggest some brands or models?
| rz2k wrote:
| Tom's Hardware seems to have a good list from January 1
| this year: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-
| external-hard-driv...
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| I tried this for a bit and noticed a huge performance drop.
| Also noticed system freezing.
|
| I have an NVME 2.0TB drive in a USB-C enclosure and while
| fast as an external this is not fast enough for booting and
| running the dozen or so apps I keep open on my MBP.
|
| YMMV if you don't act as a power user.
| lnanek2 wrote:
| USB-C is super slow for this. You need to use Thunderbolt
| NVME enclosures which can run the NVME at PCIe 3.0 x 4
| speed. I have 5 and RAID them together, which handily beats
| the internal drive for speed by about 2x.
| rfoo wrote:
| > USB-C enclosure
|
| Keep in mind that USB-C != Thunderbolt 3. Yes, the latter
| also physically connects to a USB-C form port, but it's
| totally different. It's quite confusing and sad.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Was USB 4 gonna solve that or was that just me dreaming?
| samatman wrote:
| USB 4 is basically just Thunderbolt 3. Standards bodies
| being what they are, it's more complicated than that, but
| not by much.
| netsharc wrote:
| I think OP is talking about booting from an operating system
| installed on the SSD, so I'm not sure how you can replace
| that with "cloud backups".
|
| This sounds like an ad, but Sandisk has USB 3.2 flash drive
| with NVMe inside, that according to this has up to 2 GB/s
| read speed: https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extreme-Portable-
| External-SDS...
|
| I used the version 1, not NVMe, which can only do half that
| speed, but I found it plenty fast.
| fragmede wrote:
| The technical details may differ between if my data is
| stored on an SSD I'm accessing locally that I booted from,
| vs if my data is stored in the cloud and I'm accessing it
| via a web browser, but at the end of the day, I have access
| to my files. The technical differences have many practical
| ramifications (eg disk speed), but they are sufficiently
| practically equivalent for many different use cases. We see
| this with Chromebooks, where they will never be a full
| replacement for every windows machine. There is a large
| reason they've gained marketshare, however.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Both versions have NVMe inside them, actually.
|
| Not that that means anything for performance. NVMe just
| means that it uses PCIe.
|
| Since the external port is USB, the internal use of NVMe is
| actually a downside. The drive actually has two separate
| circuit boards inside. One of them takes up space and power
| just to convert NVMe to USB, and wouldn't exist in a better
| design.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/6oPiOls.jpeg
|
| https://static.tweaktown.com/content/9/2/9280_08_sandisk-
| ext...
| lm28469 wrote:
| Not so long ago SSDs didn't exists and people were using
| their PC just fine. Today's high performance portable SSD are
| miles ahead of the 10000rpm "fast" internal HDDs from back in
| the days
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Software has bloated so much that users having an SSD is an
| assumption. In fact a 2.5 SATA SSD is almost unbearable on
| a modern machine for gaming, etc. since M2/NVME showed up.
| cptskippy wrote:
| No it isn't. My gaming PC has a 2TB SATA SSD that I store
| all my games on and it's more than fine.
|
| Many people still use HDDs for game storage.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Kinda yeah, but just to set expectations -- if you want to
| do an external hard drive as your main drive, just get a
| thunderbolt drive. You might be able to massage a usable
| experience out of USB, but thunderbolt is more or less
| equivalent to an internal drive.
| lupire wrote:
| Computers run mostly from RAM and network. Unless you are
| doing heavy disk work, nvme isn't a big deal. You can use
| internal disk for temporary projects (compiling, video
| editing) and then copy the snapshot to external at end of
| day.
| abrowne wrote:
| Tell that to my work iMac with a HDD (not my choice) and a
| new enough OS to require APFS. The only programs I
| typically have open are Chrome and a music player, and it
| freezes randomly, and Chrome is constantly waiting on
| cache.
| wheybags wrote:
| Get a new employer...
|
| (Alternatively, if you really can't switch job, just buy
| an ssd yourself)
| abrowne wrote:
| It's not that bad ... for what I'm doing, and I can do
| something else when the computer stalls. I've thought
| about an external TBT SSD, but doesn't seem worth it yet.
| wheybags wrote:
| I dunno man, ssds are pretty basic fare these days. They
| have been standard for about a decade now. If an employer
| refuses to give their developers ssds to work off, that's
| a massive sign of disrespect IMO.
| s_dev wrote:
| I haven't noticed any performance degradation which is
| counter intuitive because I really expected there to be one.
| The Samsung T5 - T7s have been great in my experience. As for
| the cloud .. well that has it's own challenges too. Currently
| I'm trying to deGoogle myself and not doing a great job at
| it.
|
| To address any conventional SSD vs NVMe SSDs performance gap
| maybe consider and external NVMe SSD!
| shawnz wrote:
| The internal SSD in M1 Macs is actually superior even to
| NVMe, since the controller is integrated directly into the
| CPU.
| mhh__ wrote:
| [Citation needed]
| vetinari wrote:
| It has about the same performance as a normal PCIe 3.0 4x
| NVMe drive.
| buildbot wrote:
| Even latency/at low queue depths? I'd expect it to have
| stunning low latency compared to standard nvme honestly.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The analog parts are the slow parts.
|
| PCIe costs you less than a microsecond of latency. A good
| SSD has 60 microseconds of latency. You're not going to
| notice any difference from moving the controller.
| [deleted]
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I would love to do that; but Windows (yes yes I know:) seems to
| intentionally block normal installation to external SSDs; and
| all the workarounds I've tried so far have removed all the
| convenience factors :|
| intrasight wrote:
| >When popping over a mates I often just plug it out and stick
| it in to their machine.
|
| I would have assume that this would not work unless the
| hardware was the same - due to device drivers, etc.
| donut2d wrote:
| Between Macs with macOS, this usually works fine (except with
| older hardware that is not supported by the OS on the
| external drive). Can't say for Windows.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This might be the case for Windows, but with Linux, most
| drivers are already distributed with the kernel and can be
| dynamically loaded and unloaded depending on what hardware is
| discovered while booting or afterwards.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is pretty much just an issue of having the right graphics
| drivers.
| s_dev wrote:
| I would have expected that as well but found in general the
| process to be pretty seamless.
|
| I should probably mention I just stumbled on to this approach
| rather than having forged it through clever thinking -- it
| was originally due to a faulty motherboard burning out
| internal HDDs consitently. So I HAD to opt for an external
| drive and once I did the going back made little sense as it
| just imposed restrictions I didn't want anymore.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| The M1 Mini is so small I can pack it and take it with me.
| carlosrg wrote:
| Slightly off-topic but I remember when system updates on Macs
| were handled much better than for example Windows. I think that's
| no longer the case: you can't download standalone updates (the
| .pkg) anymore, and installing them feels like you're installing
| the entire OS (even a minor release like 11.2.1 needs a several
| gigabyte download and takes a long time to install).
| CharlesW wrote:
| I believe you're right that you can't download "delta" updates,
| but standalone OS installers/updaters can be downloaded.
|
| Go to https://apps.apple.com/app/macos-big-sur/id1526878132
| (for Big Sur), click "Get", use Software Update to monitor the
| download progress, then "rescue" the installer ("Install macOS
| Big Sur.app") from Applications folder.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Does anyone have any info on why the actual macOS installation
| isn't bootable by both architectures? I seem to have lots of
| different universal and x86_64 binaries and kexts on my M1
| machine.
|
| Also the kernel (that I thought was the actual kernel in use) in
| /System/Library/Kernels reports "Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64"
| so I'm kinda confused about all this.
|
| I'd appreciate any pointers.
| pram wrote:
| I presume it's because the M1 variant doesn't use EFI to boot.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| That's what I'm expecting to learn, but I wonder what's going
| on inside regarding the kernel and dylibs (and other stuff I
| don't understand yet).
| my123 wrote:
| On your M1 machine, the used kernel is
| /System/Library/Kernels/kernel.release.t8101. (for T810x
| processors, A14 is T8101 and M1 is T8103, both share the same
| kernel)
|
| The installation should be bootable by both, but not sure that
| the flow to bless an install done on another machine to be
| bootable on an other M1 one is done/fully functional yet. (on
| M1 machines, you need to bless external volumes before booting
| from them)
|
| Booting an install done on an M1 on an x86 Mac should work
| already though.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| That's not the kernel. I mean, it's the kernel, but not the
| kernel that the machine boots from.
|
| The built-in bootloader actually boots iBoot2 from
| /System/Volumes/Preboot/(UUID)/boot/(long
| hash)/usr/standalone/firmware/iBoot.img4, and that then loads
| the Darwin kernel from
| /System/Volumes/Preboot/(UUID)/boot/(long hash)/System/Librar
| y/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches/kernelcache.
|
| However, the system firmware can only boot this from the
| internal SSD, not from any external storage. When you choose
| an external disk to boot from (the "bless" thing), those
| files get copied to the internal SSD, and it boots from that
| instead.
| comex wrote:
| But note that Intel Macs use a similar but completely
| different system, also redone in Big Sur, with a set of
| "kext collection" files in a different location and format.
| Because that makes so much sense.
| mrkstu wrote:
| So you literally cannot boot an M1 Mac with a nonfunctional
| internal drive, even if you're successfully 'booting' from
| an external drive before it fails? The SSD is integral to
| its functioning?
| my123 wrote:
| Yes.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Good to know- glad I got a terabyte drive then, since it
| will less likely suffer a wear failure in its usable
| lifetime, but sad that a wear part guarantees a finite
| lifetime for a machine with no moving parts.
| my123 wrote:
| That's the immutable kernelcache shipped by the machine,
| and isn't only the kernel but also includes the kexts.
|
| You can then rebuild your own kernel cache from
| /System/Library/Extensions and /System/Library/Kernels.
| (eventually with a recompiled kernel)
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| I don't see it in mentioned in the article but could be a driver
| issue for the enclosures of theses disks. Had that happen when I
| was using shitty cables for an SSD to my Raspberry.
|
| Otherwise it's entirely possible it's for security reasons and
| somehow related to the secure enclave stuff.
|
| But I might way out of my depth here.
|
| What is the use case for using an external boot disk with a mac?
| yoz-y wrote:
| One thing that comes to mind is that as a developer you don't
| have to pollute your main partition with a beta if you can
| install it on an external drive.
| londons_explore wrote:
| SSD's support namespacing allowing exactly this...
| gtufano wrote:
| AFS has containers to install betas on the same partition,
| the main partition is not polluted (and the additional
| volume(s) can be removed at will). cfr.
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208891
|
| I'm not saying that it's "normal" not to be able to boot from
| external devices, I'm just answering your point
| minimaul wrote:
| This is quite risky - previous beta updates (such as Big
| Sur) did break installing updates on older OS releases in
| the same APFS container, and some beta updates have in the
| past done incompatible APFS updates that broke the ability
| to boot old OSes.
|
| Safer to use a separate disk or partition.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The fact the errors occur before the "reboot" part of the
| installation tells me it isn't a driver issue. The "unable to
| set startup disk, SDErrorDomain 104" suggests the error is a
| check in firmware preventing this.
|
| It's probably simply unimplemented, and rather than try anyway
| there is a check somewhere in the firmware that the drive being
| marked bootable meets some criteria. Clearly the internal drive
| meets that, and _some_ external drives do. Running a tracer on
| the commands sent to the drive would likely identify it.
| LocalH wrote:
| I don't even think it should have to be justified. Booting from
| external media is one of the most basic computer maintenance
| tools we have. It's not like the computing industry has been
| giving two shits about user freedom anyway. The cynic in me
| wants to say that the insecurity of modern computing was
| intentional, so as to eventually require such user-hostile
| lockdowns. However, the rationalist in me understands that it
| most likely just ended up happening this way by chance. Either
| way, it's unfortunate that everything is being locked down more
| and more in the name of security. At the very least, such
| walled gardens should be _opt out_.
| [deleted]
| jlokier wrote:
| - Booting to recover your data when the system has trashed
| itself, typically due to a failed software update, to the point
| that it won't boot off the internal drive but the drive is
| still working. This sort of thing has been seen with older MBs.
|
| - Continuing to be able to use your laptop when the internal
| drive has failed. Very helpful if you can't afford a
| replacement, or if you need to carry on without waiting for a
| replacement and you have a recent backup.
|
| - Booting older versions of MacOS (that don't know about APFS,
| or if you have reason not to trust APFS partitioning) for
| testing, compiling for an older target, running software that
| doesn't run on the current version of MacOS, or other reasons.
|
| (But old MacOS won't work with the M1 so that doesn't matter at
| the moment.)
| simonh wrote:
| * Recovery of the machine from an external clone disk in case
| of disk failure.
|
| * Booing up a disk from another machine where it's suffered a
| non-disk failure.
|
| * Because I want to.
| shawnz wrote:
| You could use internet recovery mode for the first use cases.
| simonh wrote:
| That will boot the OS, but not with a copy of your files
| from the dead disk.
| LocalH wrote:
| The last reason you listed is probably the most important, as
| well.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| I once worked with a team that worked three 8 hour shifts and
| flexible seating, so there were about 3 times as many workers
| as there were desks and each team member might be sitting at
| several possible computers. Rather than worry about syncing
| personal files and profiles across a network, each team member
| had their own external drive that they used to boot the Mac
| mini wherever they were sitting. There may have been better
| solutions for that particular team, but this certainly worked
| and I'd hate to throw away the option for doing something like
| that in the future.
|
| And I've booted Linux from an external drive a zillion times on
| a PC. It's fairly handy to have the option.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Performance kinda sucks unless you pay a lot of attention to
| buying the right model of drive. Most drives are simply
| designed for storing a few TB's of photos and videos. As soon
| as you are doing low latency paging to the drive and millions
| of flush() operations, things bog down pretty badly, even on
| a modern SSD.
|
| Simple things like USB not having any decent way to do shared
| memory with the host are a big part of it...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's really cool.
|
| I used to support a similar need with an enterprise tool that
| cost exponentially more to implement and support.
| aloer wrote:
| OT: one of the nice little things with MacBooks is that you have
| a disk cloning thing built in. It takes literally one step and
| half an hour to clone my internal 512gb ssd to external Samsung
| t5 and have it booted up. No problems whatsoever and I've been
| successfully copying the same system back and forth about 10
| times last year
|
| One thing I do recommend though: remove airpods from the Apple
| account before cloning and pair again once the same system is
| running on new hardware. Sometimes this causes problems
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