Big sur

[dennisfcampbell]

how to have external volumes for archive and boot drives, from what i understand external boot drive are no longer an option, along with no cloning for safety back up, what about tm as external and what happens if hd crash have read some very complicated solutions to the above and am confused

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

I haven't tried it yet with my Mac mini (M1, 2020). Maybe this article will help: How to start up your M1 Mac from an external drive

C

 

[dennisfcampbell]

thanks for the direction, read the article and its persuasive but no reference to m1 imac ... do you also use imac and if so is information available to perform the same tasks, i havent as yet found any.........

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hi,

The article is specifically about all M1 Macs - MBA/MBP/mini/iMac, since their logic boards are exactly the same but in different cases.

No, I don't have an M1 iMac, I only have an old 2009 iMac.

Carbon Copy Cloner has this info about M1 Macs and Big Sur bootable clones: Beyond Bootable Backups: Adapting recovery strategies for an evolving platform

Looks like that would work,

C

 

[Nukeban]

Please pardon my cynicism, but this sounds like yet another case of Apple "improving" something until it's clearly inferior to earlier offerings.

As example, my ten year old 27inch iMac has twice as much RAM and 4 times as much disk space as the new models. And it cost me less than half as much as the new machines. (purchased used) And I can boot from any external drive without any fancy footwork.

Imho, most of us would be better off it we stopped chasing the cutting edge.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hi,

Yes and no.

The new M1 Macs manage RAM far better than the older architecture, and these are the first-generation of Apple Silicon, so they will definitely be expanding on their offerings as newer generations are released. I can tell you from being a long time Logic Pro user, the 8 GB/16 GB RAM M1 Mac mini blows away any Mac I have ever used as far as performance, even those that had 32-64 GB RAM.

I personally haven't found anything about them that is inferior to previous models, but there definitely are a few tradeoffs/inconveniences with respect to software vendor updates for compatibility, and user-accessible upgradeability.

Being an early adopter has its drawbacks, and most folks will want to wait for the new models to mature.

C

 

[Nukeban]

Ok, you make good points. Perhaps comparing old RAM and new RAM offering nose to nose is an outdated concept. I'd also plead guilty to being outdated myself, given my age of 69.

I get that our culture as a whole (not just Apple) wants to go faster, faster and faster, and that this brings benefits, at the cost of endless change and some inevitable confusion. I'm just wondering whether most Mac users would be better served by a focus on making the Mac experience simpler and more reliable.

I get that being able to brag about cutting edge features on the sales page is good for business, and as the richest company in the world it seems Apple know something about that. Market-wise, it seems the people have spoken, and ok, so maybe I'm just out of tune with what they have said.

Also, why don't they play Tommy Dorsey records on the radio anymore???? What the heck is going on with that???!!!

 

[Nukeban]

Being an early adopter has its drawbacks, and most folks will want to wait for the new models to mature.

Yes, good advice. But the thing is, the new models will never mature, in the sense of things settling down so the average user knows what is going on, and the technology in use becoming ever more reliable from long experience. No sooner will we understand this M1 business than that will be obsolete and then we will have to be confused by Q64, or whatever the next thing is.

As example, I'd be curious what percent of Macs users use their machines pretty much only for email, shopping on the web, and maybe looking at some family photos.

 

[37Shannon]

OK - so I read this link (https://bombich.com/blog/2021/05/19...dapting-recovery-strategies-evolving-platform) and the scenario seems to work like this for Big Sur and beyond:

1) In normal operation, you can boot from internal hard drive or external. The internal drive MUST be working for you to do this.

2) If the internal drive dies, you WILL NOT be able to boot from your external drive. You must then have the internal hard drive replaced and macOS reinstalled, or buy a new machine.

3) If you were using CCC6 for backup, you can then use macOS Migration Assistant to restore your files.

Is that about the size of it?

BTW, Nukeban has a point. In an old Star Trek movie, Scotty states that "the more you tinker with the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain". I fear Apple is getting to this point. If things continue in this vein, I will have to start playing with Linux again, because I am NOT going back to Windows for my base every-day use system.

 

[Nukeban]

If the internal drive dies, you WILL NOT be able to boot from your external drive. You must then have the internal hard drive replaced and macOS reinstalled, or buy a new machine.

So incredibly lame....

BTW, Nukeban has a point.

Correct, and it comes right out of the top of his windbag fat head.

 

[Nukeban]

I fear Apple is getting to this point. If things continue in this vein, I will have to start playing with Linux again

Depending on what you need to do, some old Macs can still get the job done.

 

[37Shannon]

Depending on what you need to do, some old Macs can still get the job done.

Yeah, but as I pointed out at some computer management conferences, a computer is an electromagnetic device, and so, at some point, it WILL fail. Planning for this eventuality requires considering all available alternatives - hardware and software. OS and data recovery are extremely important to me.

And, the problem with older devices is that they use older operating systems. I spent over 20 years in computer disaster recovery (DR), and more than once I found instances of where a customer got themselves stranded - newer versions of an OS would not run on their older equipment, and they were not recoverable even in a mainframe VM environment because the old hardware goes out of support and then the DR supplier has to purchase new equipment, on which the customer is unable to recover. In such cases, the customer not only has to upgrade his hardware, but his software and apps as well.

I'm running two Mac minis curently, one mid-2010 running EL Cap and one mid-2014 running Catalina, so I'm already doing what you suggest. The way things look right now, I won't be going to Big Sur or its new sibling that was announced at WWDC any time soon (I forgot what the new macOS is called because I won't be going to it).

 

[Nukeban]

I'm running two Mac minis curently, one mid-2010 running EL Cap and one mid-2014 running Catalina, so I'm already doing what you suggest. The way things look right now, I won't be going to Big Sur or its new sibling that was announced at WWDC any time soon (I forgot what the new macOS is called because I won't be going to it).

Yup, same situation here, me too. This machine does what I need to do, so I doubt I'll have any interest in the new OSs or machines until this one blows up. And who knows, I might get lucky and be dead by then.