I have an external boot drive with an M1 Ventura system on it. Can I use this to boot into any Apple Silicon computer that supports Ventura? I know I can't boot onto an Intel machine with it, but will any M1 or M2 machine work with it?
Thanks very much.
Hi Tom Wolsky,
Macs that have a security chip installed may require additional steps to allow booting from the external drive. Additionally, that boot option would have to be set from within macOS per the steps in Change your Mac startup disk:
"Important: If you have a Mac with an Apple T2 Security Chip, added security features may need to be set in order to change the startup disk. See What is the Startup Security Utility?"
and
"Change your startup disk once
2. When you see the available startup disks, select one, then click the Continue button (on a Mac with Apple silicon) or the Up arrow (on other Mac computers).
The next time you restart your computer, it starts up from the disk you selected."
Additional security measures apply for Macs with Apple silicon processors per Change security settings on the startup disk of a Mac with Apple silicon as well.
Regards.
You can't automatically plug it in and start up from it.
The original "owner" must authorize it to be a startup drive on that Mac. From then on, you can choose it for startup.
You can boot an Intel Mac with that drive. However, when I tested it both directions, the system required the OS to be reinstalled before it could be used on the opposite Mac.
I didn't do enough testing to determine if you could move the drive around to different Macs without running into a similar issue with only Apple Silicon.
Bill_T1 wrote:
Macs that have a security chip installed may require additional steps to allow booting from the external drive.
That statement is not true for Apple Silicon Macs. By default M* Macs can boot from external media by default.
Thank you Barney. The reinstalling of the OS when going to Intel is basically going back to start and building a new external drive. I understand, and I understand the security setup, what I’m not clear on is whether the drive will be useable with all Apple Silicon or will it be limited by the hardware fabric Apple is using on a particularly device M1, M1 Max, M2, M2 Max, M2 Ultra.
what I’m not clear on is whether the drive will be useable with all Apple Silicon or will it be limited by the hardware fabric Apple is using on a particularly device M1, M1 Max, M2, M2 Max, M2 Ultra.
I guess that was what I meant by the last sentence.
I don't know if it has different versions for the different chips. They have never done that for any previous OS. While there probably isn't much difference between the iX Intel chips, they are different.
That would be a configuration control nightmare to have five consistent branches.
Thank you Bill.
Thanks Barney. I’m guessing it will probably work, as it did with the Intel chips.
Booting from an external drive with an M1 Ventura system
