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Resolved USB Thumb Drives and SD Cards NOT Bootable as of macOS Big Sur or Later (was: M1 Macs, boot system from USB Thumb Drives/SD cards possible?)

ZombiePhysicist

ZombiePhysicist

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Original poster
May 22, 2014
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UPDATE 2024-06-06 and 2021-11-16: Apple removed the ability to have a bootable desktop system on a USB Thumb Drive or SD card as of Big Sur, you can no longer do so. You can with earlier versions of the OS (which may be related to APFS vs HFS+ formatting). You still can make a USB Installer USB thumb drive (I think with HFS+ formatting, not APFS) which will pseudo-boot into enough of a mini OS only capable of running the macOS installer app, but not a full desktop boot). I created another thread on how to make an Uber Multi-Boot macOS SSD drive.


Original Post:
Has anyone found a way to create a bootable SD card on M1 Macs?

Following up from this thread:

Well I tried to make a bootable drive from an SD card and it fails and hangs with the same kind of errors were discussed at length in this thread. So seems to still be an issue. The OS installs on the SD card, but seems like nothing you do will select the drive to be bootable on the new M1 Macs.
Click to expand...
forums.macrumors.com

M1 Macs, boot from external drive possible?

This thread is over six months old which is a long time in Apple Silicon world. Current Answers: 1) No. In the early days of M1 TB3 3xternals were more successful than USB but USB worked as well. 2) No. I have M1 MBA, with no USB-A ports and have made bootable externals 3) Not necessary IME My...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

It seems like it is now possible to create bootable thunderbolt or USB drives for M1 Macs and boot from them. However, I'm failing to be able to install Monterey onto an SD card.

I like using SD cards to make recovery install "disks" so that I can boot from differing version of the operating system quickly/easily. It really helps when I have some old pieces of software that only run on older versions of the OS and for recovery purposes. And also it helps when I work with my growing collection of vintage Macs where their drives break down and I need to do new installs etc.

The new SD card reader is also pretty darn fast, so for a quick recovery drive, SD cards are super convenient. I know you could make such recovery SD cards bootable with the old 2019 MBP and I think Mojave/Catalina. Seems the ability to boot from SD cards went away in Big Sur.

Thanks for any pointers/help!
 
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Mike Boreham said:
I haven't tried a bootable SD, though a friend made a bootable installer on one.
I have made bootable thumb drive in Big Sur and found some particular ones don't work so might be true of SD

another thought is whether the SD is plugged direct into a new M1 with SD slot, or an earlier one using an SD reader or hub.
Click to expand...
Above repasted from here:
forums.macrumors.com

M1 Macs, boot from external drive possible?

I haven't tried a bootable SD, though a friend made a bootable installer on one. I have made bootable thumb drive in Big Sur and found some particular ones don't work so might be true of SD another thought is whether the SD is plugged direct into a new M1 with SD slot, or an earlier one using...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

Can you tell me what thumb drive you used that you got a Big Sur bootable drive to work on?

So you can build an installer onto a USB thumbdrive/SD card, but not an actual bootable system on to one. It makes no logical sense, but thats what I have found to be the case.

I have tried both through a USB port, and on the new machine, directly in the SD card slot on the new 2021 M1max laptop. No go. It copies over, but refuses to set the SD card to be bootable. Yet, if you use the command line to build an installer onto it, the installer will launch the OS to run the installer. There seems to be some kind of "blessing" to make the drive bootable that fails to set on USB thumb drives or SD cards, EXCEPT for making it an installer, and then the blessing gets applied.

It's like it's purposefully being limited for some reason.

Which makes me wonder if there is some way to get around it. Like make the bootable installer drive and somehow install the full OS over that once the bootable installer drive has the 'boot blessing'.
 
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So after seeing this post:
Not true. USB is supported with the Apple USB-C to USB (MJ1M2AM/A) adapter.
Click to expand...
forums.macrumors.com

M1 Macs, boot from external drive possible?

Not true. USB is supported with the Apple USB-C to USB (MJ1M2AM/A) adapter. The Sandisk Ultra 3D SATA (needs a sled) and the Samsung T5 V-NAND USB 3.1 External have also been tested and are supported. The Startech USB 3.0 251BMU313 Enclosure is also supported.
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

I gave the Apple adapter a try. Interesting result.

Before using the Apple USBc to USBA adapter, by using the built in SD card on the M1 MBP, installation would succeed on the SD card (via Kingston adapter), however, it would not reboot onto the SD card.

With the Apple USBc to USBa adapter, installation succeeds to the SD card, AND it starts to reboot onto the SD card. The boot progress gets about 50% there, and then the screen goes blank. After about 1minute of blank screen the machine reboots, now to the built in SSD. And again, no amount of trying to set it to be the boot device succeeds. I still keep getting the following error:

Unable to set startup disk
An error occurred while setting “SD128” as the startup disk: The operation couldn’t be completed. (SDErrorDomain error 108.)
Click to expand...

Truly weird.
 

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ZombiePhysicist said:
Can you tell me what thumb drive you used that you got a Big Sur bootable drive to work on?
Click to expand...
I can't recall any specific info about which thumbdrive brand worked and which didn't, only that there was one that I (and another person on a forum) was unable to get it to work. It may well have been an earlier macOS. I was making a general point that the same might be true of SD brands in Monterey.

ZombiePhysicist said:
So you can build an installer onto a USB thumbdrive/SD card, but not an actual bootable system on to one. It makes no logical sense, but thats what I have found to be the case.
It's like it's purposefully being limited for some reason.

Which makes me wonder if there is some way to get around it. Like make the bootable installer drive and somehow install the full OS over that once the bootable installer drive has the 'boot blessing'.
Click to expand...

Bootable USB Installers and a bootable macOS are completely different. For a start, bootable installers can only be installed on an HFS+ formatted drive, and macOS requires APFS. Bootable installers basically just put the Install Assistant app on a USB drive, and I have found they can be put on just about anything.
 
Mike Boreham said:
I can't recall any specific info about which thumbdrive brand worked and which didn't, only that there was one that I (and another person on a forum) was unable to get it to work. It may well have been an earlier macOS. I was making a general point that the same might be true of SD brands in Monterey.



Bootable USB Installers and a bootable macOS are completely different. For a start, bootable installers can only be installed on an HFS+ formatted drive, and macOS requires APFS. Bootable installers basically just put the Install Assistant app on a USB drive, and I have found they can be put on just about anything.
Click to expand...

Yea I’m trying to get a bootable macOS. It was possible to do, i think, through Catalina.
 
Seems to me that starting around Catalina or Big Sur, one could not install a "working copy" of the OS onto USB flash drives any longer.

By "working copy" I mean a regular copy of the OS you boot and run from -- NOT THE SAME AS a bootable USB flashdrive installer.

I'm going to guess that one can't install a working copy onto an SD card, either.

It must be due to something that is present on "standard" hard drives (platter-based or SSD) -- that is NOT PRESENT on flash drives or SD cards. Something in the drive controller, ROMs, etc.
 
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Mike Boreham said:
......you mean on SD cards?, which is what you are asking in this thread....you have asked in the other thread about about other types of externals, which should be OK as per recent Eclectic Light article I posted there.
Click to expand...

Yes, specifically USB Thumb Drives and SD cards do not work. They are the most convenient forms if you want to have say 10 different macOS installs on hand to help rebuild different systems. Vs having 10 different SSD or hard drives on hand.
 
AlteMac said:
What about cloning to a SD card or USB with Superduper or Carbon Copy Cloner?
Click to expand...

I havent tried it. Might be worth a shot. But I thought those apps couldn't produce bootable copies any longer on M1 Macs? Even hard drive to hard drive? Or has that been resolved?

While full cloning does work in CCC version 6, it’s hard to see what use it is in reality. Use it to clone your M1 Mac’s internal SSD to an external container, and you apparently can’t boot from that directly, and it doesn’t appear to work entirely normally either. Where full cloning does work best is in making a faithful copy of a bootable external disk, but there is little or no advantage over using the full Installer to create a fresh copy of macOS. Use cases in which full cloning does appear valuable are marginal – for example where you already have an external disk with that version of macOS installed, and want to copy that to another external disk.
Click to expand...
eclecticlight.co

Can you create an external bootable disk by cloning an M1 Mac?

Cloning has been a popular way of creating external bootable disks. Now that CCC 6 can make full clones of disks for M1 Macs, is it a solution?
eclecticlight.co eclecticlight.co

So perhaps I build a fully working external copy, and then try cloning that. Might be worth a try. I suspect it will fail. I suspect it will clone everything perfectly, and when it gets to the point to set the "bootable" blessing, it will fail. But I guess we won't know until someone tries.

But what a mess. And WHY!?! What is the point of this. It's like Apple works harder just to frustrate it's power/enthusiast users for no good reason.
 
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So I tried making a clone. First of all, holy crap is CCC 6 fast!

But it didn't work. It doesnt even show up as a bootable option. At least when you use the recovery installer to make the thumb drive/SD card OS it shows up as an option in the startup disk options or when you get into the boot options screen. The CCC clone doesnt even show as an option. So it applies even less boot blessings than the official way.

I didnt have my hopes up for this, but kind of disappointed it didnt even get as close as the vanilla installer way.

So as we stand, it is impossible to create a bootable system on a USB thumb drive/SD card with macOS. That's just crazy. So I guess I need to now buy like 10 small USB SSD drives. Just madness that this cannot be done.
 
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ZombiePhysicist said:
So as we stand, it is impossible to create a bootable system on a USB thumb drive/SD card with macOS. That's just crazy. So I guess I need to now buy like 10 small USB SSD drives. Just madness that this cannot be done.
Click to expand...
FWIW, I have just tried installing onto an SD and a thumb drive. Confirm it doesn't work for me either. I tried four times, three to an SD (of which two were using bootable USB installer, one from Recovery) and one was to a Sandisk Extreme thumb drive.

Not sure why you need to buy 10 USB SSD drives? The only versions of macOS which can run on Silicon are Big Sur and Monterey. And anyway you could get a very small USB drive like Samsung T7/T5, Crucial X6, Sandisk and put multiple OSes on separate volumes on the one drive, This would be my personal preference to multiple SD or thumb drives. They will run faster than from SD or thumb drive, (unless getting very expensive SD/thumb)

I don't feel strongly about this. It is an edge case that will affect very few people. Yes it has taken away some capability that you used to use, and that is increasingly the case with macOS (and silicon), like it or not. Doing things our own special ways that have worked for years is increasingly likely to lead to problems due to changes which are all driven by security, one way or another.
 
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Well I get to use the thumb drives on the older machines, but it’s really convenient to set them up all the same way and label them. They take up little space that way, and frankly. It’s wayyyyyy cheaper. Buying an extra boot ssd per new machine and OS gets very costly.

and I see no security increase by taking this feature away. Just added expense for no reason.
 
ZombiePhysicist said:
Well I get to use the thumb drives on the older machines, but it’s really convenient to set them up all the same way and label them. They take up little space that way, and frankly. It’s wayyyyyy cheaper. Buying an extra boot ssd per new machine and OS gets very costly.
Click to expand...
Why have an extra boot SSD per new machine? I haven't checked lately but at one time I had a bootable SSD that could boot my Intel iMac or my M1 MBA, using different containers. I don't have iMac any more.

A 500GB Samsung T5 (£52) with 15 x 32GB containers would be cheaper than 15 x 32GB Thumbdrives.

ZombiePhysicist said:
and I see no security increase by taking this feature away. Just added expense for no reason.
Click to expand...
I don't know why SD and thumbs won't boot, but doubt the reason is a specific security issue linked to this one capability. More a case of this one capability is collateral damage for the whole architectural and macOS changes in Silicon.
 
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Mike Boreham said:
Why have an extra boot SSD per new machine? I haven't checked lately but at one time I had a bootable SSD that could boot my Intel iMac or my M1 MBA, using different containers. I don't have iMac any more.

A 500GB Samsung T5 (£52) with 15 x 32GB containers would be cheaper than 15 x 32GB Thumbdrives.


I don't know why SD and thumbs won't boot, but doubt the reason is a specific security issue linked to this one capability. More a case of this one capability is collateral damage for the whole architectural and macOS changes in Silicon.
Click to expand...

If you do not know, than I cannot see your reasoning for having no doubt. I have a great many doubts. Apple has shown on MANY occasions they are more than capable of doing stupid and/or spitefully stupid things.

By the way, I went as far as successfully installing Catalina and trying to do a software update to Big Sur. The upgrade fails. So something in Big Sur and newer purposefully prevents you from running the OS off a thumb drive/SD card.

The container thing might work for moving forward. I guess I really have no choice but to get an SSD and label the containers etc. I find multiple boot partitions to be highly fault prone. Your mileage may be different with regard to that. There is the organizational benefit. I have all my SD card boot disks in a nice I guess you would say like photo album book that holds them, and various CDs and even floppies for booting/working with lots of different systems. The SSD won't fit there. Plus, when looking in the book, it's all labeled nice, at a glance I can grab the version of the OS I need. It's very nice and the organizational access is helpful to me.

Anyway, sad reality is I really have no choice. Apple axed this ability for no good reason, so TLDR is I just have to shut up and deal with it.
 
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satcomer said:
Maybe this video will help you:

Click to expand...

Thank you, but we do know you can boot from an external hard drive or SSD (either thunderbolt or USB). What you USED to be able to install and boot the operating system from are USB Thumb drives and SD cards, and as of Big Sur, you no longer can.

Appreciate the pointer regardless, thanks.
 
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ZombiePhysicist said:
If you do not know, than I cannot see your reasoning for having no doubt.
Click to expand...
I didn't actually say I had no doubt, I just said that I doubted that the reason was a specific security issue linked to this one capability. You may be right and it is..... all I meant to imply is that I personally think it is more likely a result of the big other changes. I could have put it better.
 
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Any updates on this topic? I would really like to use my new 1TB SDXC as a bootable system. :/
 
Sorry apple killed booting macOS from USB Thumb Drives. It will now only boot from SSDs (confusingly, it will boot SSDs even from USB based SSD drives).
 
ZombiePhysicist said:
Sorry apple killed booting macOS from USB Thumb Drives. It will now only boot from SSDs (confusingly, it will boot SSDs even from USB based SSD drives).
Click to expand...
That's so dissapointing. I bought this SD Card only for that purpose. But on the other hand they figured out how to replace the SSDs on the M1s now..
 
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