Apple silicon Macs were designed to boot almost as securely from external disks as from their internal SSD. That makes macOS installation a little more complicated. Here’s how to do that.
external drive
Systematic and thorough account of the structure and function of bootable external disks and dual-boot systems from High Sierra to Sequoia, and how to diagnose their problems.
You could save hundreds of $/€/£ buying a Mac with a smaller internal SSD. Is that a good economy, or will you come to regret it? Here are the pros and cons.
It took over 6 months before creating bootable external disks was fairly reliable, and even then there were unexplained failures. Did someone fail to tell us something?
Two important catches that can cause a macOS installation to fail in Apple silicon: using the DFU port, and not setting up ownership correctly. Both are explained here.
Some support USB4, others don’t. Some share the controller, others don’t. Some support DFU mode but then can’t be used to create a bootable external disk on Apple silicon.
Which versions of macOS can you ‘dual boot’, should you install them all on the internal SSD, or is a bootable external disk better, and when would you need to virtualise?
Do external SSDs draw so much power that they’re likely to exceed that available from Thunderbolt or USB4? What would the consequences be in terms of heat?
This has become more complex with increasingly popular hybrid drives that support USB4/Thunderbolt and fall back to USB 3.x.
How well can Time Machine back up other volumes, such as those on external drives? Can it restore them when the original disk fails or goes missing?
The Eclectic Light Company 