Fix this situation? For all we know it is user replaceable but Luke didn't do the procedure right. And we didn't even know this might be an option until a few days ago.
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Mac Studio Storage Not User-Upgradeable Due to Software Block [Updated]
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There’s nothing to fix. Follow the instructions and do a DFU restore.
But I can erase the drive and reencrypt it to use with my T15, without having to connect a second T15. Disk encryption is meant only to protect against unauthorized data access. If someone erases the drive and deletes the original keys, then the encryption did its job because the data is no longer accessible.
Macs without T1 and T2 chips use EFI firmware which make it easy to boot from external drives and Internet Recovery even if the internal drive is replaced with a blank. Apple Silicon Macs use a new boot process: code that used to be stored on a firmware chip is now stored on the internal drive. The results of this new process include:
1. Booting from external drives depends on the internal drive, even when boot security is turned off. This reminds me of the days when booting a PC from different hard drives used to be much more difficult, and booting from USB drives was unheard of, unlike Macs at the time.
2. Replacing the internal SSD requires connecting a second Mac to pair the new SSD to the first Mac. This is like the old PC days when... I don't have any PC example so primitive to compare this with
. But I am sure that if the situation was reversed and Windows PCs were made this way, Mac users would consider it ridiculous.I was going to quote some people here but soon after realized that the majority are just echoing whatever interpretation of the story sees fit for maximum indignation and anger inducing.
So anybody that happens to be piqued, it only took 2mins of whatever search on Twitter (yeah, I know, crass source, but bear with me) to realize that there’s the chance that maybe these aren’t SSDs but raw flash storage modules… pretty much as if you tried to unglue/unsolder a chip from one SSD drive and try to cram it on another.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable or Macrumors itself to document or explore what’s the weight behind this?
Edit: he mentions a ton of things, from (paraphrasing) “can’t really see this in the same light as old school x86 architectures” to “there are tiny ARM chipsets all over the place”.
Anyways, I too started thinking “why apple is messing up with what’s OBVIOUSLY SSDs, it has to be greed period”. To To then soon after face the fact that I’m probably being an ignorant.
Edit #2: I see that this same tweet thread had been posted 2 pages ago. Yet very few have not ignored it… how come, I think it has some useful insight to the state of things. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in with a more ELI5 tone.
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Would it be possible to bring someone to take a look at what the Twitter thread posted a couple of several pages ago (https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...e-due-to-software-block.2338908/post-30957949) to see what’s up? Also people with knowledge have suggested that there’s a specific procedure to be able to swap the RAW storage modules from one machine to the other, maybe something to try out?
Despite being easily removable since it is not soldered down, the Mac Studio's SSD storage is not currently user-upgradeable due to a software block, YouTuber Luke Miani has discovered.
Initial teardowns suggested that the Mac Studio's storage could be upgradeable since it is not soldered in place. Each Mac Studio contains two internal SSD slots, and the SSDs themselves can be freely swapped between the connectors.
In a video on his YouTube channel, Miani tested if the Mac Studio's storage is user upgradeable in practice. Miani wiped the SSD of a Mac Studio, removed it from the machine, and inserted it into an empty SSD slot in another Mac Studio, but the Mac's status light blinked SOS and would not boot.
The Mac Studio recognizes the SSD, but Apple's software prevents it from booting, suggesting that this is a conscious decision by Apple to prevent users from upgrading their storage themselves. On its website, Apple claims that the Mac Studio's SSD storage is "not user accessible" and encourages users to configure the device with enough storage at the point of purchase.
It now seems that the purpose of the easily replaceable storage is to aid repairs performed by authorized technicians, who likely will have software tools that enable the Mac Studio to boot from different internal storage. Since the prevention of user-upgradeability appears to simply be due to a software block, Apple could enable users to upgrade their own storage in the future via an update.
It was originally impossible for users to manually upgrade the storage of the Mac Pro, but Apple went on to offer a kit to upgrade the Mac Pro's storage in mid-2020, so a similar move for the Mac Studio is not out of the question, particularly given the announcement of Apple's Self Service Repair Program.
Article Link: Mac Studio Storage Not User-Upgradeable Due to Software Block
The blatant lack of investigation has definitely made a mess from the first reply on the article onwards, would be nice to see the final full picture of the current state regarding storage on the Mac Studio.
Man Luke is pushing some bangers this quarter abs straight up swinging balls! Against Apple - I actually like this.
He’s the budget and aftermarket goto YouTuber when it comes to resurrecting Apple older hardware and hasn’t gotten the love or respect he really should have until recently.
See Siri’s definition.
The odacity of Apple bringing back the Cube in modern form with this much power and featuring Apple Campus space ship as the insolidarios of button Mac studio case design and then block users from upgrading ssd storage on a desktop PC that live son it’s own is just atrociously and blatantly rude while calling it modular.
Expandability externally is NOT modular.
What sucks is sales will drop or returns will be high possibly and Apple mills an otherwise sweet looking and performance machine.
I thought it was a tea amount to the Apple brand for hardware longevity of their products. This era doesn’t seem to embrace that. Sad really.
He’s the budget and aftermarket goto YouTuber when it comes to resurrecting Apple older hardware and hasn’t gotten the love or respect he really should have until recently.
It isn’t by regular dictionary definitions.
See Siri’s definition.
I think the USA will also I honestly expect a lawsuit about false advertising soon enough.
Straight up & down it is. It’s not illegal though else oligarchs, pharaohs, kings and queens, and billionaires would be serving life sentences tree times over bruddah.
Not sure how apples Mac Studio connector for ssd is cost effective.
The odacity of Apple bringing back the Cube in modern form with this much power and featuring Apple Campus space ship as the insolidarios of button Mac studio case design and then block users from upgrading ssd storage on a desktop PC that live son it’s own is just atrociously and blatantly rude while calling it modular.
Expandability externally is NOT modular.
What sucks is sales will drop or returns will be high possibly and Apple mills an otherwise sweet looking and performance machine.
I thought it was a tea amount to the Apple brand for hardware longevity of their products. This era doesn’t seem to embrace that. Sad really.
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This story is much ado about nothing. Veterans around here know the tech drill when it comes to RAM and SSD with Apple. I don't get all the whining and hating on Apple.
I'd been drinking the Apple Koolaid for a long time, but this is seriously the kind of BS that made me not want Apple products in the first place.
Yep, my 2015 MBP was the last of its kind. I remember last year buying a new fast nvme drive and it was amazing the new life it gave to the laptop. It's a shame these computers are so close to simple upgrades.
I don't think Apple is trying to build and sell Macs that can be buyer upgraded. Your average consumer is not obsessed with a 1/10 of things the MR Mac populace is. They want a machine that does what they need to get done.
Professional and DIY user upgrade ability are two different things. What is odd is you trying to equate to the two.
The power supplies are completely out in the open on the Mac Studio (and likewise on many of the iMacs). This does, in fact, make it a bit of a dangerous endeavor to attempt a user-upgrade. It can result in being electrocuted if handled wrongly.
That being said, if Apple could make a G4 cube 2000 (in roughly the same form factor) and make it highly user-serviceable, they almost certainly could have done it in 2022. I definitely understand the decision to make them not upgradable on some of the MacBooks, which are in a tiny form factor and genuinely have very tight space constraints. But on the Mac Studio, it's a little bit more perplexing. This machine is largely targeting the Pro and the "prosumer" market, and it has the price tag to match. I have to believe that their decision to expose the power supply was probably intentional in some capacity or another.
I think part of it is due to Apple limiting liability on their part from user injury and or the user killing the machine and then demanding Apple replace it.
People on this forum need to let go of the past when it comes to user upgrading.
The regulars on here are the vast minority. The problem is they think they are the majority. Billy and Sally want to walk into the Apple Store, consult with the Apple employee, buy their Mac, and be on their way. Unless Billy is a MR nerd with nothing better to do, he isn't going to go home and crack open his new toy for upgrades. He will spend the extra money for more storage and more RAM.
>Apple could enable users to upgrade their own storage in the future via an update.
What on earth would lead people to believe this would happen?
What on earth would lead people to believe this would happen?
My IIsi had the PDS slot.
By the end it had a 2 slot riser card, where I eventually had a Daystar 040 and and graphics card. Combined with a new HD and upgraded memory, as well as a logitech keyboard and mouse and multisync monitor, nothing about my “Mac” was from Apple, except the OS and the logic board.
Apple lost out on upgrade cycles and sales by making it so easy to replace the guts of their Macs with third party products it nearly bankrupt them.
As long as if years from now if the electronics recycling/reselling company I work for gets a broken Mac Studio that needs to be recycled, we can pull out the SSD and destroy it so the data can't be accessed again? That's all that matters to our company. (If we got an otherwise fully-functional Mac Studio and would be re-selling it, we'd simply wipe the SSD using the Mac OS installer/recovery mode, especially since Monterey has that "Erase Mac" option.)
The SSD cannot be accessed without the original machine that it was paired with, so removing it should be good enough.
If people didn't "whine and hate" we'd still have the Touch Bar/lack of ports/Butterfly keyboard on the MBP.
In this case “whine and hate” would just result in insecure data storage. The point here is there is no software block. When you replace the SSD you need to put the machine in DFU mode and do a remote restore, the same as other M1 macs. You can;t just take a drive that was encrypted on machine A and have it be understood by machine B, because only machine a knows the cryptographic key.
Greed.
That specific tweet is only notable because he happens to be the ARM Linux developer who reported how Apple SSD behaves previously (note: potential data loss).
Not discounting what he said, but in the context of this discussion, you don't need to quote him as the source of this information isn't exclusively from him: that is, Apple has been using "raw storage modules" since iMac Pro, then 2019 Mac Pro, then Apple Silicon Macs. (The latest iMac 5k may also do but I am not sure). The Mac Studio is the first Apple Silicon Mac to use socketed storage instead of soldered, so this part is new but pretty much everyone will assume the mechanism is similar to the iMac Pro and Mac Pro, where these cards are "raw storage modules" without controllers.
The problem with Luke Miani's video is that he (conveniently) bypassed these otherwise well-established facts and proceed to "test" the Studio storage swapping without going through the necessary steps to prove or disprove anything.
I didn't watch the video, I think what needs to be done is to put the Mac in DFU and check if Configurator will allow a Restore.
I deal with thousands of Mac a year, while I am not experts of all things, I know enough to make me good at what I do. Apple Silicon Mac operates like iOS devices, and you cannot erase the drive completely via the UI. If one must fully erase the drive, simply run a dd command in terminal in recovery mode. However, running dd will prevent the Mac from booting, period; because it nukes the recovery partitions so holding down power won't do anything. The only way to get the Mac up and running is run a Restore with Configurator in DFU mode.
I've attached the repair note in GSX, you can see that replacing the storage for the Mac Studio require running Mac Configuration Utility (MCU), the propriatory software that mates/serializes components with the Mac. With computers that has non-replacible storage, running MCU runs the chances for nuking the drive as it updates the firmware on all the sub-systems such as T2, Touch ID, SMC, EFI etc.
Apple claims security so the data is useless without the key (on T2 or secure enclave), so the Mac Studio follows the same principal. Since the drive is erased, I suspect it needs Configurator to fully restore the unit. Should the drive is not erased before, swapping technically should work because the key pairs are still intact.
I deal with thousands of Mac a year, while I am not experts of all things, I know enough to make me good at what I do. Apple Silicon Mac operates like iOS devices, and you cannot erase the drive completely via the UI. If one must fully erase the drive, simply run a dd command in terminal in recovery mode. However, running dd will prevent the Mac from booting, period; because it nukes the recovery partitions so holding down power won't do anything. The only way to get the Mac up and running is run a Restore with Configurator in DFU mode.
I've attached the repair note in GSX, you can see that replacing the storage for the Mac Studio require running Mac Configuration Utility (MCU), the propriatory software that mates/serializes components with the Mac. With computers that has non-replacible storage, running MCU runs the chances for nuking the drive as it updates the firmware on all the sub-systems such as T2, Touch ID, SMC, EFI etc.
Apple claims security so the data is useless without the key (on T2 or secure enclave), so the Mac Studio follows the same principal. Since the drive is erased, I suspect it needs Configurator to fully restore the unit. Should the drive is not erased before, swapping technically should work because the key pairs are still intact.
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1TB for $700.
...their current asking price on replacement SSD's.
...and they'll only sell you the same size drive that came in it.
When you need more space, they want you to buy a new computer.
You'd think I'm making this up, but ask any pre-2020 iMac owner that had their stock SSD fail, and we were just happy to not have to also buy a whole new logic board too, like all the M1 owners are going to have to in 2 more years when your AppleCare runs out, bc its all soldiered together in one big expensive disposable "appliance". Going to be some fun quarterly call questions ahead.
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