M1 Macs are different, as they always start booting from their internal SSD. Basic configurations are simple, reliable with well-established disaster recovery methods.
recovery
Your brand new M1 Mac is now unboxed. What next? Here’s a brief guide for anyone new to M1 Macs, which should spare you time and effort.
Soon M1 Macs will be able to boot from two major versions of macOS, and with new models coming, users are going to have more complex systems. How will Recovery cope?
Introduced in Mac OS X 10.7, it remained an HFS+ partition until High Sierra. With Mojave, it became an APFS volume, except for M1 Macs.
Recovering from one regular panic should be straightforward. But what if it’s a boot loop, in which your Mac tries to start up, panics, restarts, in an endless loop? Don’t panic: here are the solutions.
Installing two different versions of macOS within a single container brings flexibility as they share free space, a little economy maybe, and complexity – explained here.
Are you testing or going to test Monterey beta? Advice on kernel panics, the M1 missing boot disk problem, updates and escape routes.
Terminal in Recovery on an M1 Mac has access to many valuable command tools, including USB-C diagnostics,options otherwise unavailable in csrutil, and more.
Install macOS in Recovery can only install one version, which probably isn’t the one you want. How can you get an earlier version installed, then?
How useful is the traditional panacea of re-installing macOS in Big Sur? And is it worth maintaining an external recovery disk to deal with problems?