Apple Intelligence disabled when booting from external drive

[stanwhocan]

Went for the the Base M4 Mac Mini (16/256) expecting to boot from the external drive (since it will have better speeds than the internal drive).

Looks like Apple Intelligence is disabled when booting from an external drive, which makes me consider if I should switch back to booting from internal drive. My concern is would I be completely fine purely only using the internal drive for boot and having all applications/dev environments/basically everything else on the external? Is there anything that I should be wary of with doing this or are there things that can’t be on external when booting from internal?

Side question: If you only had $200, would you upgrade storage or memory? What upgrades to base model be considered before just buying the base M4 Pro model?

 

[turbineseaplane]

Whoa! -- Awesome!! 😯
(personally not interested in AI at all)

This legitimately gets me excited about getting a base Mini and running 100% off an external TB NVMe!
A "native" way to not have any system resources spent on AI

Side question: If you only had $200, would you upgrade storage or memory? What upgrades to base model be considered before just buying the base M4 Pro model?

Memory -- 100% memory over storage

 

[stanwhocan]

This legitimately gets me excited about getting a base Mini and running 100% off an external TB NVMe!
A "native" way to not have any system resources spent on AI

I get that. Especially with how new it is and how most of it isn’t rolled out yet, along with saving memory from being used on AI (not sure how efficient Apple Intelligence is with RAM usage).
I think I’ll probably experiment with it while retaining my external drive as bootable for a bit. If it’s not worth having Apple intelligence on at all, I’ll just switch back.

 

[Adora]

I wish I was even able to boot from an external drive on my M3 iMac but it always fails while there is already a progress bar. Just nothing happens anymore. I cloned the drives with SuperDuper.

How did you do it and can I use a larger and faster Thunderbolt 4 drive as my main drive instead of the internal 1TB one that was so expensive to upgrade that I couldn't choose 2TB and instead rather got more RAM. Or do I have to reinstall macOS on it?

I now have 4 Thunderbolt 4 drives 2x 4TB and 2x 2TB that were all together cheaper (without case) than the upgrade from 256GB to 1TB and also much faster and only use them for backups.

 

[stanwhocan]

How did you do it and can I use a larger and faster Thunderbolt 4 drive as my main drive instead of the internal 1TB one that was so expensive to upgrade that I couldn't choose 2TB and instead rather got more RAM. Or do I have to reinstall macOS on it?

I just did a fresh install of latest macOS on it, since I’m new to mac (as a personal device) and it’s a new product.

 

[drrich2]

Side question: If you only had $200, would you upgrade storage or memory?

I don't know what you anticipate doing with your system. I do know with Apple Silicon Macs, you can add external storage but not external memory.

That leads me to lean toward more RAM, but I don't know what you do with your system or how long you tend to keep a computer.

I've also been reading posts discussing limitations of using external storage. Does iCloud sync with external drive content? Here's an Apple Community thread that indicates no (it's from 2023).

Especially if you tend to keep a computer a long time, and use iCloud much, this might be good to check into. And will DropBox be an issue syncing with external storage? Here's a DropBox thread that makes me wonder.

My point is, it's great to think external storage is just like internal (only cheaper), but the impression I get from other's posts is that's not entirely true.

 

[JazzyGB1]

There's always a 'gotcha' now with Apple...always.
They give with one hand and take with another.
They are just petty.
Their RAM and storage pricing is obscene.
The only reason Apple AI won't work with external storage, is because Apple choose for it not to.
I'm unsure how important AI will be to using a Mac. it's probably not important yet, but no doubt they'll make it essential in the near future for software compatibility, so it's just another Apple 'f**k you to customers.
You've no option to even put 4TB of internal storage on a M4 Mac Mini (you need a M4 Pro for that) and Apple charge you...wait for it...£800 for increasing the M4 Mac Mini to 2TB.
The only way to get 4TB of internal storage is to order an M4 Pro Mac Mini which takes the price to a whopping £2599!!!
It's unethical.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Does iCloud sync with external drive content? Here's an Apple Community thread that indicates no (it's from 2023).

I think if you boot the OS and run the OS off of the external 100% then you have no iCloud issues

The iCloud issues arise when folks use the internal SSD for their OS but are space limited and are trying to have iCloud live on the external drive

That does not work

 

[Adora]

I just did a fresh install of latest macOS on it, since I’m new to mac (as a personal device) and it’s a new product.

Thanks, I'll try it that way, now that there finally is a full installer of 15.2 (Beta 2). I'll just start it from within Beta 3 if that works.

Creating bootable installers is another thing that doesn't work anymore for me. They are not even recognized as a startup disk.

It was all so much easier before the T2 chip, Apple Silicon, SIP and APFS.

 

[turbineseaplane]

It was all so much easier before the T2 chip, Apple Silicon, SIP and APFS.

Yup
Sure was

Please do circle back and let us all know how it goes.
I’m seriously considering a base mini plus TB external to run the OS off of

 

[dukebound85]

I believe moving the home folder mitigates this issue

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/new-mac-minis-storage-can-be-upgraded-but-its-not-easy.2442447/post-33558401

May you report back if you try this and are successful?

 

[Adora]

Yup
Sure was

Please do circle back and let us all know how it goes.
I’m seriously considering a base mini plus TB external to run the OS off of

Yes I'll let you know. But I am sick and slow, so it could take a while. I need a good day, when I am not distracted with other things. Maybe I'll handle it this week.

I am considering a Mini too because I don't like the iMac Display compared to the one next to it. Also I need more Thunderbolt ports, my Docks are already overloaded. I have a 2 port TB4 Dock with a 1 port TB4 Dock hanging on it and all TB ports on the Docks are filled with drives and I will need one for another display. At least I could free one for my Display that now suddenly is working with the DisplayPort on one of the Docks, on HDMI I always got only 60Hz and needed a Thunderbolt port before to get up to 144Hz

But I'll wait a few months. I need the money elsewhere at the moment.

Maybe I even wait for the M4 Studio and compare the price difference from the Pro Mini to the Max Studio with 64GB RAM and the lowest storage option.

 

[TechnoMonk]

Went for the the Base M4 Mac Mini (16/256) expecting to boot from the external drive (since it will have better speeds than the internal drive).

Looks like Apple Intelligence is disabled when booting from an external drive, which makes me consider if I should switch back to booting from internal drive. My concern is would I be completely fine purely only using the internal drive for boot and having all applications/dev environments/basically everything else on the external? Is there anything that I should be wary of with doing this or are there things that can’t be on external when booting from internal?

Side question: If you only had $200, would you upgrade storage or memory? What upgrades to base model be considered before just buying the base M4 Pro model?

I max out on RAM and processor. External storage is my thunderbolt enclosure with multi m.2 slots. I get amazing speeds and don’t miss internal storage.

 

[macsoundsolutions]

I believe moving the home folder mitigates this issue

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/new-mac-minis-storage-can-be-upgraded-but-its-not-easy.2442447/post-33558401

May you report back if you try this and are successful?

I moved my home folder to external USB 4 drive with a M1 studio and AI works as long as the system is still on the internal drive, when I tried booting the system on my external USB 4 drive it said AI not supported on external drive. Someone did say that Apple supports it if you use a USB4 and a certified thunderbolt cable and it was working for them but I have yet to see some proof of this claim, if it’s true I will have to eat some crow due to the video I made yesterday 😅
External Boot Drive? Not so intelligent!

 

[Adora]

I max out on RAM and processor. External storage is my thunderbolt enclosure with multi m.2 slots. I get amazing speeds and don’t miss internal storage.

There are really fast ones out there and you could even use them as RAID to get more speed.

But even the cheap ones I got are faster than the one in my iMac. They "only" have up to 7.350MB/s read and 6.800MB/s write.

I saw some with more than double the speed they, need good cooling.

The one in my M3 iMac gets about 3.000 for both and I always thought at least the 1TB storage and more is very fast.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Internal drive is more than fast enough for a boot drive, just boot from it, and use external for actual storage. (In fact, even the base model's SSD should be faster than all but a brand-new really expensive Thunderbolt 5 SSD, as the base model SSD should be capable of over 40Gbps, the maximum speed a USB4/Thunderbolt4 SSD would be even theoretically capable of.)

You can set your external drive to hold your user home folder: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/01/25/how-to-move-mac-user-folder-to-another-drive/

You can even set your Applications folder to be on another drive: https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...ange-the-default-mac-app-store-install-folder

I have an M1 Max Mac Studio with base storage, which is basically just boot and scratch space. My Users folder is on one external drive, my Applications folder is on another. (Waiting for an M4+ Ultra Studio upgrade with WiFi 7 before upgrading, which means I may actually be waiting for an M5.)

-----

As for why Apple Intelligence isn't allowed when booting from an external drive - it's almost certainly security. Apple's security chip (built into M-series, but basically the same as the T2 chip on the last few Intel generations) can only fully secure the internal SSD. External SSDs can't be truly secured, even with an encrypted file system. And as Apple is all about having Apple Intelligence be super-secure with your data, they want to make sure they have complete security control over the system drive it's keeping that data on.

 

[Adora]

I moved my home folder to external USB 4 drive with a M1 studio and AI works as long as the system is still on the internal drive, when I tried booting the system on my external USB 4 drive it said AI not supported on external drive. Someone did say that Apple supports it if you use a USB4 and a certified thunderbolt cable and it was working for them but I have yet to see some proof of this claim, if it’s true I will have to eat some crow due to the video I made yesterday 😅
External Boot Drive? Not so intelligent!

In Carbon Copy Cloner is a warning to use USB drives to boot from, only Thunderbolt. There seem to be problems, at least with USB 3.x.

 

[jimscard]

There's always a 'gotcha' now with Apple...always.
They give with one hand and take with another.
They are just petty.
Their RAM and storage pricing is obscene.
The only reason Apple AI won't work with external storage, is because Apple choose for it not to.
I'm unsure how important AI will be to using a Mac. it's probably not important yet, but no doubt they'll make it essential in the near future for software compatibility, so it's just another Apple 'f**k you to customers.
You've no option to even put 4TB of internal storage on a M4 Mac Mini (you need a M4 Pro for that) and Apple charge you...wait for it...£800 for increasing the M4 Mac Mini to 2TB.
The only way to get 4TB of internal storage is to order an M4 Pro Mac Mini which takes the price to a whopping £2599!!!
It's unethical.

The reason AI doesn’t work with external storage is privacy and security.

 

[Adora]

Things you should know before relying on an external macOS boot device
This procedure relies on Apple's proprietary APFS replication utility, which is outside of our developmental control. We welcome feedback on this functionality, but we cannot offer in-depth troubleshooting assistance for problems that Apple's replication utility encounters.
• Whether the destination is bootable depends on the compatibility of your Mac, macOS, and the destination device. We cannot offer any troubleshooting assistance for the bootability of the destination device beyond the suggestions offered in our External Boot Troubleshooting kbase article.
• The destination may not remain bootable if you proceed to perform regular backups to the destination. This procedure is not intended to be used for regular backups.
• Apple Silicon Macs: Apple's replication utility may fail to produce a bootable USB device. Results with Thunderbolt devices are more consistent. If you only have a USB device, we recommend making a Standard Backup to that device, then install macOS onto the backup (in that order specifically).
• Apple Silicon Macs will not boot at all if the internal storage fails. An external bootable device will not serve as a rescue disk for that scenario.
For the reasons noted above, we do not recommend that you attempt to make your backups bootable; we recommend that you proceed with a "Standard Backup" instead. You can restore all of your documents, compatible applications, and settings from a standard CCC backup without the extra effort involved in establishing and maintaining a bootable device.

This red part is really a no-go. I hate Apple for that.

 

[TechnoMonk]

There are really fast ones out there and you could even use them as RAID to get more speed.

But even the cheap ones I got are faster than the one in my iMac. They "only" have up to 7.350MB/s read and 6.800MB/s write.

I saw some with more than double the speed they, need good cooling.

The one in my M3 iMac gets about 3.000 for both and I always thought at least the 1TB storage and more is very fast.

I still use internal boot drive and have 3 levels of storage. TB enclosure with 16 TB, with cooling. I have 4 TB portable drive with my important files when I Am traveling. Two 8TB had NAS as third level backup. I wouldn’t go beyond 1 TB for my Macs. I can expand to 32 TB if needed.

 

[Adora]

The reason AI doesn’t work with external storage is privacy and security.

One time there will be so much privacy and security that you can't even turn on your Mac anymore. I disabled ALL of it, like SIP, Gatekeeper, those Boot Security options are set to the lowest setting possible etc....

I even use unencrypted backup HDDs because I wanted them in JHFS and not APFS.

My main focus is on Internet privacy like using a good VPN service or even two at once and Tor Browser in addition. And don't keep private data online.

And Firewall of course.

 

[drrich2]

As for why Apple Intelligence isn't allowed when booting from an external drive - it's almost certainly security. Apple's security chip (built into M-series, but basically the same as the T2 chip on the last few Intel generations) can only fully secure the internal SSD. External SSDs can't be truly secured, even with an encrypted file system. And as Apple is all about having Apple Intelligence be super-secure with your data, they want to make sure they have complete security control over the system drive it's keeping that data on.

Apple Silicon Macs will not boot at all if the internal storage fails. An external bootable device will not serve as a rescue disk for that scenario.

As the last snippet (in red) reminds us, Apple's fixation on internal storage appears to predate concerns about Apple intelligence. It's my understanding that if your Apple Silicon Mac's internal storage fails, that Mac is bricked - if outside of Apple Care, it's a paper weight.

Which raises a fascinating question...if given the choice between Apple's precious 'security' or the lack thereof that'd let you avoid the trade-offs we've read about here, which would most of us prefer?

If you chose to forego that security and if you Mac's internal SSD ever failed no problem, you'd have a bootable external ready to go, no problem, would you prefer that?

Put another way, to what extent is Apple serving us vs. Apple?

 

[altaic]

I disabled ALL of it, like SIP, Gatekeeper, those Boot Security options are set to the lowest setting possible etc....

That is very unwise. VPNs, TOR, and firewalls do not provide system/kernel protections.

 

[TechnoMonk]

As the last snippet (in red) reminds us, Apple's fixation on internal storage appears to predate concerns about Apple intelligence. It's my understanding that if your Apple Silicon Mac's internal storage fails, that Mac is bricked - if outside of Apple Care, it's a paper weight.

Which raises a fascinating question...if given the choice between Apple's precious 'security' or the lack thereof that'd let you avoid the trade-offs we've read about here, which would most of us prefer?

If you chose to forego that security and if you Mac's internal SSD ever failed no problem, you'd have a bootable external ready to go, no problem, would you prefer that?

Put another way, to what extent is Apple serving us vs. Apple?

That ship has sailed long time ago after T2 was introduced, and AS handles the encryption and security. If you don’t want security, there are plenty of windows laptops.

 

[drrich2]

That ship has sailed long time ago after T2 was introduced, and AS handles the encryption and security. If you don’t want security, there are plenty of windows laptops.

So do you think a lot of users were clamoring for that Apple security, or did Apple lock down their product and tell us it was for our own good?

Put another way, does a large portion of the user base prefer what Apple did?