M1 ssd erased with out external drive enabled

gregmorgansen Said:

"M1 ssd erased with out external drive enabled: I erased the system drive on my m1 Mac mini to clean install Big Sur without enabling external boot enabled. Now I can’t reinstall Big Sur because it won’t recognize the external usb Big Sur boot disc I created. Is there any way to fix this and boot from the external usb I created?"

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Reset the SMC and your NVRAM:

Sometimes when changes are made to the system(i.e. Formats), system configurations (i.e. for Ports) become manipulated, technically. So, reset the SMC and NVRAM. Try performing each thrice. It may take sometime, being certain you have the time to perform these resets.

Mount the Hard Drive in Disk Utility:

While booted into Recovery Mode [Hold Down: command + R keys upon boot], go to Disk Utility> tap the Hard Drive, then tap the Mount button. See if you can then install it. If it is already mounted, then unmount it and then remount it. See where you can go from there.

No you will need to use Recovery Mode to reinstall macOS.

If you erased the entire SSD, then you will actually need access to another Mac compatible with macOS 10.15+ so that you can perform a "Restore" using DFU Mode using the instructions in this Apple article:

Revive or restore a Mac with Apple silicon with Apple Configurator 2 - Apple Support

So it is possible to use the Disk Utility to erase the internal drive so that the M1 Mac can no longer boot? Does it warn the user about this?

"An M1 Mac Can’t Boot from an External Drive If Its Internal Drive Is Dead"

https://tidbits.com/2021/05/27/an-m1-mac-cant-boot-from-an-external-drive-if-its-internal-drive-is-dead/

"If you’re unfortunate enough to completely wipe your M1 Mac’s internal storage, the only way to recover it is to restore the whole firmware and software image in DFU mode with Configurator 2."

https://eclecticlight.co/2021/01/14/m1-macs-radically-change-boot-and-recovery/