Apple ’s M1 and M2 Apple silicon Macs have a difference that ’s get off some readers up from the way it was handled with previous Intel - establish Macs : how to come out up or reboot an M - series Mac from an external drive . Intel Macs more often than not make this easy .
You might want touse a bootable external driveto have a higher - content SSD than is offer or low-cost via Apple ’s pricing . Or you need one for reliever in example something goes very pear form with your M1 or M2 Mac .
Testing indicates that the following shape are need to start up from an external volume :
The startup screen for recovery mode on an M-series Mac lets you pick an alternative startup drive.
Let me boom on each point .
With the first versions of macOS that process on early M - serial publication modeling , many hoi polloi see they had to utilize a aboriginal Thunderbolt 3 or 4 drive . Fortunately , macOS appears to have maturate , and you could utilize either USB 3.1 or 3.2 or Thunderbolt 3 or 4 . Most cheap external drive use a flavor of USB 3 to unite over USB - century and rely on the slower SATA format , which coupled with an SSD is about 10 times fast than a hard disk ride . You demand Thunderbolt 3 or 4 to put on a benefit from the newer NVMe / PCIe interface , which can be several times fast than a SATA SSD , and about two to three time as expensive . confer with this Mac 911 columnfor more details on the two interfaces and their throughput .
( It is potential to practice an HDD as an outside M - series startup drive , but the operation will be so misfortunate , even with a 7200 rpm hard cause , you ’ll wish you had n’t . )
The startup screen for recovery mode on an M-series Mac lets you pick an alternative startup drive.
To practice macOS 11 Big Sur ( the first M - series compatible version of macOS ) all the way through macOS 13 Ventura ( and for future releases ) , the driving has to be format as APFS . But testing by many people makes it clean-cut you ca n’t just convert the formatting on an existing drive : inconspicuous partitions used for use come to to booting from an Intel effort from a previous macOS installation on the drive crusade issues .
To avoid set up a mass that wo n’t exercise right , erase the drive before putting on data on it . Launch Disk Utility , select the SSD , clickErase , and follow prompt to make a single APFS container . This should pass over out any conflicting data point structures .
Download the macOS installer directly from the Mac App Store . If you ’re using a version of macOS older than the current release , confer this articleon download old releases .
If you need to make this push back a bootable knockoff , Bombich Software , makers ofCarbon Copy Cloner , urge you first clone your data bulk ( which its software can do ) , and then set up macOSafterthat .
To get back to your internal effort as the inauguration volume , you’re able to open up the Startup Disk preference Zen while macOS is running on the outside drive and pick out the home drive . Then clickRestart .
You ’ll have to unmount the external cause after the restart is concluded , and some masses have report that macOS says one of its partitions remains in use . ( Big Sur and previous versions of macOS invisibly divide a macOS into a volume containing system file and a mass with your user data ; the information volume may not unmount correctly . ) You might choose to exclude down at that point , disconnect the external drive , start up again , and plug it in .
you could also use recovery modality to switch the inauguration disk . This is a bit more complicated with an M - series Mac than an Intel one , where you could but hold down the Option paint while restarting and select a drive ( unless you had turned on certain security system configurations , in which case you ’d necessitate to use recovery modality to disable them ) .
Here ’s how you change the startup private road from recovery mode with an M1 or M2 Mac :
Select > Shut Down .
When you see your Mac has powered down , give down the power button until you see a prompt that says “ freight inauguration options . ”
When the Options icon appears , you will also see a list of volumes next to it that you could select . Select the volume that you require to take up up from .
ClickContinueand the Mac restarts from that intensity .
The startup screen for recovery mood on an M - series Mac rent you clean an alternative inauguration drive .
This Mac 911 article is in reception to a interrogative submitted by Macworld lecturer Gerald .
Read our run for advice on thebest Hard Driveorbest SSD for Mac . Also readWhich Mac port is the skillful to use for external depot ?
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