Problems trying to use an external drive as the boot drive (home)

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Mac mini M1

Guías de reparación, desmontaje e información de resolución de problemas para el Mac mini de 2020 con el chip M1 de Apple. Identificado por el número de modelo A2348.

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Steven @steven2717

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Publicado: 12 de nov. de 2025

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Problems trying to use an external drive as the boot drive (home)

My experience with the SanDisk Pro G40 on a Mac mini M1 has been frustratingly unstable. The drive is often invisible at cold boot, only appearing after unplug-replug or reboot. macOS updates frequently abort with LocalPolicy or sealed-system errors, sometimes forcing Recovery reinstalls.

The startup-disk choice resets, Mail and Music/TV libraries rebuild or vanish after path changes, and data seems lost. After sleep, the SSD randomly disconnects; Spotlight and iCloud loops rebuild indexes endlessly. FileVault, TRIM, and Thunderbolt power management make things worse, causing freezes or corrupted mounts. Cloning is nearly useless—only a clean migration gives stability.

From my testing and countless reports online, external booting on Apple Silicon is still technically possible but feels deliberately neglected by Apple and gets more fragile, slower, and frustrating with each macOS release.

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DanJ @danj Rep: 502.4mil Self employed contract worker 35 347 977 · Answer 1 · 2025-11-12T11:05:25-07:00

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DanJ @danj

Rep: 502.4mil

Self employed contract worker

35

347

977

Publicado: 12 de nov. de 2025

Opciones

Yes, this is a major issue in all of the M Series Mac systems. This is a technical limitation due to the architecture between the integrated Flash (NAND) storage and the heavy encryption these systems use to protect your data.

Apple expected people would use the internal as the boot drive and Home Drive per a discrete user account and as well as the Apps needed. Externals were for the bulky data and projects.

Even still you can make it better by reformatting your internal turning off encryption (first making a full backup) Turn off FileVault on Mac as well as use the Boot Manager Option (⌥) Mac startup key combinations and Change your Mac startup disk but using a Thunderbolt based drive not USB.

Here's a deep dive into ultra speed storage using an external drive New Apple Silicon Drive record... For LLMs if that's your direction.

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Mac mini M1

Problems trying to use an external drive as the boot drive (home)

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