Installing Golden Gate 27 on external SSD for Mac mini M1

jorelenterprises wrote:

I ended up using Superduper 4. What a great product.

I've never personally used it, but I know it has been around for years. However, using it to make a bootable clone is "best effort" these days so don't expect that part to be around or work in the future.

Here is an article written by the developer of Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) at the time of Big Sur & the first Apple Silicon Macs....another app with similar capabilities which has been around for decades:

https://bombich.com/en/kb/ccc/6/cloning-macos-system-volumes-apple-software-restore

Here is a more recent article from the CCC developer regarding bootable external drive clones (very good article as it mentions lots of the things that must be allowed & configured):

https://support.bombich.com/hc/en-us/articles/20686422131479-Creating-legacy-bootable-copies-of-macOS

@Ian R. Brown does ask a great question since even bootable external macOS drives are not as reliable as they used to be with the older Intel Macs. And there are limitations as @Matti Haveri mentions as well as trying to avoid using the DFU Port for the bootable external drive since minor macOS update patches may not install properly if the external boot drive is connected to the computer's DFU Port.

Also keep in mind that bootable macOS external drives are probably not going to be around for long. Just look at the botched MacBook NEO where that laptop has only one USB3 rated port which is also the DFU Port....the second port is only rated for USB2 which is certainly not a good option for booting macOS these days. Bootable external drives are not an Apple priority or even a consideration in designing these systems today or the NEO's design would be different. It is great when it works, but don't expect it to be trouble free these days. Same goes for "Sharing Mode" (aka Target Disk Mode) as that involves a Thunderbolt connection, but the NEO has no Thunderbolt.

I can certainly understand the need for a bootable external drive to allow testing of a new OS or allow continued use of an older OS. I have seen occasions though where a pending macOS minor update patch can break the other OS when you try to return to it requiring macOS to be reinstalled. So be careful and make sure to have good backups as they may be needed at some point.

I wanted to know why he wants to try external booting and possibly add some of my findings.

I have been doing it for 3 years and it worked perfectly as I don't want Apple Pay or Apple AI. There weren't any performance problems . . . absolutely identical when using Thunderbolt connections and less than a 5% hit when using USB 3.0

So why did I suddenly change back to internal booting last week?

A few months ago I realised an external drive has very little data security as it is not protected by the Secure Enclave and therefore needed either an extremely complex password or a long 4 - 5 word passphrase to beat the attentions of a skilled thief.

I persevered with a long passphrase for those months but it was getting to be a nuisance, so I decided to revert to internal booting where even a 4 character password would be impregnable thanks to the Secure Enclave Protection.

It's also a simpler setup and I was thinking of my family who are not very computer savvy . . . I didn't want them to have a couple of useless bricks should I not be around.

My original reason for dual booting was to reduce the strain (writes) on my 256 GB internal drive but I have now developed a system where all my downloads, photos, music and videos are processed automatically on the external leaving the internal simply for emails and web browsing.

Here is an Apple article with instructions:

Use an external storage device as a Mac startup disk - Apple Support

Make sure to pay close attention this extremely important part:

Make sure that your storage device is plugged into the appropriate port on your Mac. * If you're using a Mac with Apple silicon, plug your storage device into any compatible port except the DFU port. Learn how to identify the DFU port. After macOS installation is complete, you can connect your storage device to any compatible port, including the DFU port.

“Installing Golden Gate 27 on external SSD for Mac mini M1: installing Golden Gate 27 on to a 512GB ssd external drive on my mac mini m1”

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Installing Golden Gate on an External Hard Drive:

Seems to me you are looking to boot off of a secondhand device: an external hard drive.

On the other hand, if you want to create a backup of your installation, then a Time Machine Backup is what to create here. Use a hard drive that is least 2 times the totally installed storage. As you go about using up more storage, older Time Machine Backups are created. Go here: Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

Be aware that installing macOS on an external drive will lose certain functions. The biggest one is that macOS does not support Apple Intelligence and new Siri app on an external drive, which may or may to be a big thing for you.

I for one, working in an environment with Apple Intelligence enabled and working in one without it does not make any noticeable difference to me. But then that could just be the way I use my computer.

woodmeister50 wrote:

Be aware that installing macOS on an external drive will lose certain functions. The biggest one is that macOS does not support Apple Intelligence and new Siri app on an external drive, which may or may to be a big thing for you.

At least in my setup MBP M5 it is not possible to "Erase All Content and Settings" on an external GG boot drive because it is "Not supported on this Mac".

HWTech wrote:

Here is an article written by the developer of Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) at the time of Big Sur & the first Apple Silicon Macs....another app with similar capabilities which has been around for decades:

https://bombich.com/en/kb/ccc/6/cloning-macos-system-volumes-apple-software-restore

Here is a more recent article from the CCC developer regarding bootable external drive clones (very good article as it mentions lots of the things that must be allowed & configured):

https://support.bombich.com/hc/en-us/articles/20686422131479-Creating-legacy-bootable-copies-of-macOS

Yes. Despite CCC author's recommendation, with Intel Macs CCC has always worked fine to make bootable clones up to Sequoia (Mac mini 2018). I used that feature often when testing apps: just clone a known macOS setup volume (or even an archived "bootable" .dmg) to a volume which might take as little as 5 minutes (compared to macOS install which takes 30-50 minutes + configuring the desired test setup).

I stubbornly tried to continue that practice with my new MBP M5 but then gave up because it never worked and eventually made the target or maybe even all other boot volumes on the external disk unbootable needing macOS install on top anyway.

BTW on Intel Macs I also always used Option-boot to multi-boot to other disks or APFS volumes but on M series Mac I have switched using the Startup Disk because then it is not necessary to shutdown in between and it sometimes better "blesses" the next boot volume. But it seems even the Startup Disk can't switch between two boot volumes on the same external APFS container so a detour to the internal boot disk is then needed.

Why do you want to install the macOS on an external . . . I speak as one who has been doing it on 2 minis for the last 3 years - until last week.