Can I boot Mac Mini M2 from an external drive ?

[Orizence]

Thank you, I will check my data to see if it fits the 256 gb internal drive.

Careful though. Filling an SSD will hurt performance. More free space the better. Dont cram her full

 

[poj]

Careful though. Filling an SSD will hurt performance. More free space the better. Dont cram her full

Thanks, will do.

 

[Chancha]

I have always done it this way, people always say I'll have problems, and they might be right.... but years later I'm waiting for these problems...

I might change my ways and do symlinks though if I do run into any problems, but fingers crossed I don't need to. Keep in mind, I dont do "work" on my mac, I wont lose money if I have to create a new local account or reinstall my OS.

I suppose there must be ways to avoid all the possible issues and and all will be fine. Or that the folks who have had issues got special workflows or softwares that runs into this where others don’t.

But the point is with older generations of Macs, the drives were SATA or older and there was no concept of whichever must be the defacto boot volume. However with Apple Silicon this has changed, or perhaps even earlier with T2 T1 chips in the last Intel Macs. Apple killing off all Macs with internal HDDs, then shifting to APFS also means they expect a certain minimum performance from the boot volume. And then there is the added security features that weren’t there before. All in all it makes shuffling the boot volume much less trivial than before.

 

[Orizence]

I suppose there must be ways to avoid all the possible issues and and all will be fine. Or that the folks who have had issues got special workflows or softwares that runs into this where others don’t.

But the point is with older generations of Macs, the drives were SATA or older and there was no concept of whichever must be the defacto boot volume. However with Apple Silicon this has changed, or perhaps even earlier with T2 T1 chips in the last Intel Macs. Apple killing off all Macs with internal HDDs, then shifting to APFS also means they expect a certain minimum performance from the boot volume. And then there is the added security features that weren’t there before. All in all it makes shuffling the boot volume much less trivial than before

I did do some googling and it seemed like Monterey caused havoc on these types of setups with updates. I did do a upgrade last night from 13.0 to whatever is the latest now and kept going no problem..

SIDE RANT... how does apple send out a brand new computer on old software? you would've thought it came with 13.1 or something at least. Not a big deal, just something I expected from a PC not a $1300 Mac

 

[poj]

Done.

I decide to delete some Apps and everything I can , move data to external drive , move Photos to external drive.
I managed to keep everything under 166 Gb. So I use the internal SSD as the boot drive. Have free space around 90 Gb which should be enough.

Move Data & Photos to the Samsung T7.
Took 2 days to install osX and migrate from Time machine backup. (very slow because I use HDD docking with the old HDD I got.)
Have a little trouble with Epson driver. (communication error)

Now I think I got it works fine.
Want to thank you everyone in this thread for your help, input & info.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

 

[rufwork]

Done.

I decide to delete some Apps and everything I can , move data to external drive , move Photos to external drive.
I managed to keep everything under 166 Gb. So I use the internal SSD as the boot drive. Have free space around 90 Gb which should be enough.

Move Data & Photos to the Samsung T7.
Took 2 days to install osX and migrate from Time machine backup. (very slow because I use HDD docking with the old HDD I got.)
Have a little trouble with Epson driver. (communication error)

Now I think I got it works fine.
Want to thank you everyone in this thread for your help, input & info.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Did you ever get curious and try putting the OS on an external drive since?

I'm tempted to do because at least then I can plug in a drive to any mini and have "my" computer running essentially on boot. And pretend the external drive is 40% slower: Will I notice in practice? Idk.

Anyhow, it was an interesting read with a twist at the end. Wonder if anyone has tried recently.

I mean the whole argument about the trashcan PowerMac was that "the expansion is on the outside", which could naturally apply to these studios & minis too...

 

[Ben J.]

Did you ever get curious and try putting the OS on an external drive since?

I'm tempted to do because at least then I can plug in a drive to any mini and have "my" computer running essentially on boot. And pretend the external drive is 40% slower: Will I notice in practice? Idk.

Anyhow, it was an interesting read with a twist at the end. Wonder if anyone has tried recently.

I mean the whole argument about the trashcan PowerMac was that "the expansion is on the outside", which could naturally apply to these studios & minis too...

There is nothing special about it. I've run my macs from external drives without problems, including modern ARM processors and macOS up to Sonoma.

How to use an external storage device as a Mac startup disk - Apple Support

If you have an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive, you can install macOS on that device, then use it as a Mac startup disk.

support.apple.com

 

[OSMac]

Thanks Ben, for answering the original question.