That’s the same error message I keep getting, when I switch to the external USB drive (click on padlock to reveal shaded drive), in Startup Disk, and click on Restart.
But this is something I’ve been looking into in preparation.Try with HFS instead. I get that error when trying to upgrade to Big Sur on my Mac Pro on a drive already formatted to APFS.
I have booted into Recovery. Run Disk Utility. Formatted the drive as plain APFS (no encryption/case sensitivity), GUID partition map. Run the Internet Big Sur installer... system spontaneously reboots after it's done installing... and yet, it never boots from that drive and trying to select it in Startup disk yields the "update this version of macOS" error message. It also never shows up directly in Recovery mode, so you can't select it to boot from right off the bat.Ok, so I don’t have my M1 to test yet
From what I’ve read, on multiple sources, the most reliable way with Thunderbolt, or USB-C. Is to boot into recovery, format/partition your external drive, then install macOS from recovery into the external drive.
Once complete, apparently booting into recovery to select the external to boot from, or selecting it from settings in macOS, are the most reliable ways to boot.
I’m taking it with a pinch of salt until I can try it out for myself, but hopefully it’s that simple.
There have been some changes with external booting mentioned in the release notes for the 11.1 betas. I'd probably just wait until that's released to see if it resolves anything.
I'm not trying to upgrade. I'm trying to install. And this is an M1 Mac, not an Intel Mac. To my knowledge, the M1 Mac will not boot from a non-APFS filesystem drive. However, I'll be gobsmacked, if I discover it was that simple an answer all this time... ?♂️
I worried for a bit that I might have been getting that error because I did the install-to-external-drive on an Intel machine but I presume/hope it's universal now.
At the moment they don't support booting from external drives. They probably won't release it as a feature until the MX/M2 line hits. I'm thinking it wasn't written into the M1 instruction set just yet because the point of the M1 is to get developers moving over to universal Binaries. I wouldn't recommend trying to bypass this though because it could cause problems that could end up bricking your M1. Chromebooks have always ran on ARM and I can remember a netbook ASUS put out running a Intel ARM chip that ran Windows XP. What makes the M1 so special is it's features like it's neural engine and Memory management and it may not be ready to handle things like external booting and eGPUs yet but will in a future update.Ok, something is seriously screwed up! I followed all the instructions. I did everything right. But notice something very odd... the first picture is of "Macintosh HD" (the internal SSD in my M1 Mac Mini). The second picture is of my newly formatted (and installed to) 500GB USB-C SSD. Notice something just slightly amiss?
Now, if the drives were identical (content-wise), the issue I and others are having, could be chalked up to a "Apple doesn't support external booting" (it's being prevented in some way). But the external drive doesn't even have a complete install! And, I'm assuming everything gets installed during the initial install process, not some "after process", after the initial install. So, this leads me to wonder if the installer for Big Sur 11.0.1 (for M1 Macs) is seriously pork'd up!
And, to add insult to injury, attempting to install over the first install (just to see if that would fix the initial install) yields the third picture... and I got this, when I specifically unchecked "Copy user settings...". Doesn't matter... same error message, checked or unchecked.
Where does Apple specifically, definitively state this? That they do NOT support external booting on the M1 Macs. I want to see it. Because the lack of consensus is absolutely infuriating. At least, if it's an official line from Apple, let them SAY SO, in print, with NO ambiguity! I'll accept that, even if I don't like it.
You definitely won't be able to charge more when you sell your M1 now! There goes your devilish plan.After banging my head into a brick wall, for over four different attempts (each time yielding the same result: "your macOS is out of date, update."), talking to an Apple support person in chat (failed yet again), and finally talking to an Apple Tech (I guess) over the phone this morning, the offical word is... "We don't support booting from an external device".
There is one last thing I just tried that failed as well ("restore" from Disk Utility), so I'm just going to return my 500Gb external... I guess it just can't be done.
Ok, please explain the brand/model of Thunderbolt 3 SSD you're using. Explain steps of how you formatted the drive and installed 11.0.1 to it. Show pictures. The whole kit 'n' kaboodle. With enough irrefutable consensus, from enough Thunderbolt 3 SSD users, I will feel a bit safer investing into a Thunderbolt 3 SSD, though as to why a USB-C drive isn't acceptable, I don't undertand.
Because as earlier in the thread, thunderbolt drives are seen by macOS as almost (completely?) like the internal drive, USB drives are not. Not proven yet but quite plausible that TB externals will boot while USB won't.
