Is it possible to boot the 2018 mini from an external ssd. I am on my 7th mini starting way back with the 1.83 and have always used CCC or super duper to clone hard drives. I got a new base mini and I am tickled with it , but it will not let me boot from an external drive, is there a way to do this. Tom
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Can you boot the 2018 mini from external drive
- Thread starter tom29786
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It is possible, but you have to boot into recovery mode and explicitly allow it.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208330
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208330
I followed those directions previously but couldn’t get it to work. I have Windows 10 installed on an external SSD (without using boot camp) that I used with my previous mini but cannot get it to boot on my 2018 mini. It just boots straight into Mojave no matter what. It works fine though on my 2016 MBP (without the T2 chip).
It's not a Mojave feature, rather it's the "Secure Boot" enabled by the T2 processor in the 2018 Mini, 2018 MacBook Pros, and the iMac Pro. Coming soon to additional computers near you
I made a backup using super duper onto an external SSD and booted up off that drive, after turning the ability to boot off an external drive in the recovery mode. However, I was able to boot this new mini off the backup drive when it had the bootable backup from my old mini (which was 10.12 I think) before without going through that step, so older OSs may work or bypass the T2 security.