Mac Studio - Separate Drive?

[Obsidian Dragon]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

Yes. My post was to correct Janne's post. I have no doubt about what I wrote, I have used these bootable clones on MacOS 11 since january when I got my M1 mini. But like I also wrote; I don't have all the details.
Check Bombich help pages, search for 'bootable backup'.

Great. Good to know.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

Yes. My post was to correct Janne's post. I have no doubt about what I wrote, I have used these bootable clones on MacOS 11 since january when I got my M1 mini. But like I also wrote; I don't have all the details.
Check Bombich help pages, search for 'bootable backup'.

I'm still unsure how we're explaining the discrepancies between the two statements, unless one describes one method of "booting" and the other describes another.

Ben, when you say that you've "used these bootable clones" what does that mean? Are you saying that you're copying the data from the backup to the internal drive and then booting, *or* are you saying that you're booting directly from the external drive independent of the MacMini's internal drive?

I, too, have heard about the security chip, and the inability to boot from an external drive, so I'm looking for clarity on what does, and especially what does not, work.

[Obsidian Dragon]

I did a little digging and found that it seems the Intel Macs with the T2 chips are the ones that have a security setting that prevents booting from an external drive. In other words:

A: Older Intel Macs without the T2 chip can boot from external drives.
B: Newer M1/M1Pro/M1Max/M1Ultra/M2 Macs can boot from external drives.

C: Only Intel Macs with the T2 chip must change the security settings to be able to boot from an external drive. Here is a link to describe how to change that setting.

This is what I found but have not done, so if someone can confirm, that will be great.

[thin ice]

Originally Posted by Obsidian Dragon

I did a little digging and found that it seems the Intel Macs with the T2 chips are the ones that have a security setting that prevents booting from an external drive. In other words:

B: Newer M1/M1Pro/M1Max/M1Ultra/M2 Macs can boot from external drives.

This is good news, as I made a Superduper backup in January without questioning whether it would work as a bootable backup. I'll have to try holding the option key and booting from the backup.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by Obsidian Dragon

I did a little digging and found that it seems the Intel Macs with the T2 chips are the ones that have a security setting that prevents booting from an external drive. In other words:
A: Older Intel Macs without the T2 chip can boot from external drives.
B: Newer M1/M1Pro/M1Max/M1Ultra/M2 Macs can boot from external drives.
C: Only Intel Macs with the T2 chip must change the security settings to be able to boot from an external drive. Here is a link to describe how to change that setting.
This is what I found but have not done, so if someone can confirm, that will be great.

OK, I see.
On Intel, I was actually so used to having the security thing (SIP) off that I forgot that aspect to this. That's why I never mentioned it. Since getting apple silicon mac I haven't seen the need to disable it.

Janne is still right about the new macs being bricked though, if the internal drive breaks. No external boot drive will work if that happens. At least that's what I hear.

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

Ben, when you say that you've "used these bootable clones" what does that mean? Are you saying that you're copying the data from the backup to the internal drive and then booting, *or* are you saying that you're booting directly from the external drive independent of the MacMini's internal drive?

The external is a clone of the internal system drive, and is independent, yes. Except for this thing I just mentioned; I think it has to be working, the internal drive, doesn't matter what's on it, system or no system, it just has to be there. That's how I understand it.

[spinsong]

There is a programming aspect to the security chip. You have to choose allow booting from external from recovery mode. To add to the confusion, you can have a firmware password. If someone assigns one, and doesn’t tell you about it, your computer might get bricked.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

Since getting apple silicon mac I haven't seen the need to disable it.

I was forced to disable when first installing ProTools on my Mac Studio -- the Thunderbolt Native drivers wouldn't install properly without that step and the Native box couldn't be seen by PT. This also happened with my older Intel machine with a particular combination of ProTools and Mac OS, but only that combination. Odd.

[Darryl Ramm]

You can external boot an Apple Silicon Mac. I've done that multiple times on a M1 MBP (which I no longer have).

Some confusion happening in this thread, kinda understandable... I suspect a lot of confusion is caused here by the way Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) traditionally made clones are not-bootable on Apple Silicon Macs (or on Intel based Macs which have T2 and are running some of the recent major macOS releases). (see *** post on Bombich website below). But there absolutely are ways to make bootable clones including with CCC. There is a lot going on under the covers, APFS and its COW (Copy on Write) based system volumes, T2 based encryption technology and APFS encrypted file system (all APFS file systems are encrypted even if you don't think they are). What you have today with Apple Silicon based systems is an evolution of these technologies, combined with some changes like the new system recovery behavior (including you no longer enable external boot like you did on Intel based T2 equipped macs). Apple has been putting this all in place over years now. It hopefully leads to a more trustable system, with reduced chances of hacking, viruses and supply chain attacks. But on the down side things have gotten more complex especially with backup and recovery. Please find time soon to play, test and understand this, when your system has crashed and you need to recover it ain't the time.

As with many good things. It's complicated. Especially separating the issue of installing a bootable macOS version onto an external drive (easy) vs. cloning a running system onto an external drive (more complex). And then the questions also become why are you doing this? To test new macOS versions? To recover in the case of an internal drive failure? (by fast most likely from user finger error). How exactly are you going to recover etc. What will you do in the hopefully very rare case the Mac internal drive won't enter recovery mode etc.

If you wanted to boot a Apple Silicon Mac off an external drive, you either need to enter recovery mode on the Mac and select the external drive or if macOS is running you can select the external drive in Preferences>Startup Disk (but that takes a system that is running macOS, if your system has failed/crashed you have to use recovery mode).

If you are relying on having an external drive for recovery make sure at least you know how to do this from recovery mode. You should play with/test doing that (safely once you have all your content/data backed up elsewhere, don't test stuff with your only clone).

Now that assumes you have a valid external boot drive.... which you can get by running a macOS installer, installing to that drive. All stuff you might want to do when testing out a new macOS version...

Ah WAIT! you say, you want to boot an external drive that is a clone of your running system... Well, that is where the bigger issues are concentrated. And where I'll leave you to read/follow specific instructions for how you want to do this/what third party tools to use.

Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) and similar software now leverages Apple's asr (APFS Replication) utility to make bootable clone copies (you need to choose to make them bootable if you use the classic way of doing this they wont' be bootable clones, see the CCC website links below). You may or may not want to do this, a traditional (non-bootable on Apple silicon) CCC clone might be a better backup mechanism for recovery of sessions and documents. Apple Time machine might increasingly be a useful option.

If you just want to make a bootable clone you can run asr by hand. But, well it's complex, see man asr (i.e. run the man command in terminal) for more information

Oh boy I keep wanting to write "arse" for the name of that utility.

----

There is good info online about this stuff, (some info can be out of date, or just a little wrong so be careful).. I'm not going to try to reproduce all the info out there here.

Some useful introductory articles are:

• https://www.macworld.com/article/331...nal-drive.html
• https://appleinsider.com/articles/21...external-drive
• https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/...macs-heres-how

These articles may contain some over simplified or slightly wrong info, e.g. the claims you need a Thunderbolt drive to be bootable. It seems some USB drives will work. You should test anything you are going to rely on. Be careful with (some?) USB thumb drives not working as reliably as high-performance external boot devices.

Apple Recovery Mode doc:

• https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-...hl82829c17/mac

Blogger Howard Oakley does some nice reverse engineering on what is going on if you are interested in the technical detail this is a great source. There are many many posts on his blog that might be useful for folks interested in more details.

• https://eclecticlight.co/2021/05/25/...ing-an-m1-mac/
• https://eclecticlight.co/2020/11/30/...volume-sealed/
• https://eclecticlight.co/2022/04/29/...disks-work-too (note he shows some external USB drives do work)

Lots of us use CCC, look at the relevant stuff there on Bombich software's web site:

• https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/cloning-...ftware-restore
• https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/help-my-clone-wont-boot (good general clone boot troubleshooting)
• https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/macos-monterey-known-issues (note the FAQ: CCC will not update system volume on Legacy Bootable...)
• https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/cloning-...ftware-restore (*** this might help add context esp. for folks with T2 based Intel Macs).

Apple also has this (https://developer.apple.com/support/...-Reference.pdf) technical/API level developer documentation on APFS that gives some info on how things work. I'm not aware of a good more end-user focused Apple white paper on APFS. Some forensics tools companies have what might be useful technical papers you can get from them.

If anybody else knows of great explanations/white papers etc on this stuff please share.

[Ben Jenssen]

Much appreciated, Darryl. A very solid conflagration (sorry. I couldn't find the word. Look it up.) of the issues at hand. You make it seem so unfathomable, though. For me, though I miss the flexibility of the ways that were, I find it easy and practical to have CCC maintain a bootable backup for me, with snapshots going back. And I think Apple is on the right track with safety and system integrity protection (SIP).

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

You make it seem so unfathomable, though.

I really hope not, (yikes but I just edited some tortured sentences) I tried to explain why there is some confusion, at least being clear what can be done should help.. and encourage folks to go look for the *how* instructions. There is too much to cover to try to give simple directions to do stuff.. it all depends on what folks want to do. Some of those links I gave and others on those sites have very simple prescriptions for doing stuff (like actually making a bootable clone with CCC using the new way of doing that).

The only thing that will make any of this appear simple is actually playing and doing stuff.

I know this is a PITA, and Apple is in a hard spot, maybe especially with concerns about supply chain attacks and their products being manufactured offshore. I at least appreciate Apple wants to own security of their products and not encourage/allow reliance on a third party tools. Microsoft let that happened and look at the pile of steaming pain that inflicted on users for a long time (and still is).