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

Re:Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if inte... by asdff on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @01:14PM (#29084229)

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.

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Re:Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if inte... by liminalsunset on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @01:22PM (#29084353)

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.

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Re:Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if inte... by concinds on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @01:24PM (#29084396)

Note that AS Macs still support external boot, just not when the internal drive is dead, since booting relies on the iBoot volume stored on the internal drive.

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Re:Apple Silicon Macs can't boot from external drive if inte... by mlindner on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @01:28PM (#29084468)

The article is only saying if the internal drive fails, you can't boot off an external drive, not that you can't boot off an external drive at all.

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