how do i boot from external drive on mac mini 2018 w/ monterey

Question

how do i boot from external drive on mac mini 2018 w/ monterey

I have a Mac Mini (2018) with 128 Gb SSD. I have purchased an external Thunderbolt SSD (2 Tb), and am trying to set it up to be able to boot from the external drive. I formatted the drive with APFS and installed Monterey (macOS 12.6.3) on it. I've booted into the recovery mode to set the T2 security chip. I've set the parameter to allow boot from an external drive, and tried all three security options, but I can't get it to boot from the external drive.

I spent 4 hours with Apple support trying to get this to work with no success. Hoping someone can provide info how to accomplish this, or confirm that this can't be accomplished.

It strikes me as a little bit insane to provide an un-upgradeable internal drive in such a small size with no option to boot from an external drive.

Thank you in advance.

Rich Errington

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Jan 28, 2023 12:02 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 28, 2023 9:57 PM in response to Rich Errington

I ended up starting over. Formatted external drive (2.0TB OWC Envoy Pro FX) with APFS, reinstalled Monterey 12.6.3). This time I went through all the setup questions, and it booted.

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Answer 2

tbirdvet

Level 6

17,108 points

Jan 28, 2023 6:50 AM in response to Rich Errington

I always use Carbon Copy Cloner to make my bootable drives and never fails. Just be sure when you clone your internal drive to use the "legacy" feature to make it bootable.

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Answer 3

Jan 28, 2023 1:08 AM in response to Rich Errington

External boot works for my Mac mini 2018 Mojave-Ventura via Option-boot (and I guess also via the Startup disk preference although I do not use that) with "OWC Drive Dock USB-C Dual Drive Bay Solution, USB 3.1 Gen 2" and "StarTech USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Adapter Cable for 2.5" SATA Drives".

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how do i boot from external drive on mac mini 2018 w/ monterey

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