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(Solved) Has anyone successfully installed Sonoma in external disk on Apple Silicon Macs?
- Thread starter zhaoxin
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This might help.
eclecticlight.co
Make a Ventura bootable external disk for an Apple silicon Mac
Described and illustrated, with key points on cables, and setting up ownership and accounts. And what does happen when the external boot disk is missing?
eclecticlight.co
Solved.
Turns out that this a not well known issue of macOS. For usb external usb drive, sometimes usb-c port of a Mac won't work on booting macOS.
My drive is a usb 3.1 type-c drive. I connect it with my Mac mini over a usb c-c line. That cause the macOS issue. The solution is to change a c-a line. Some how, in that way, and a reinstallation of macOS, everything works.
Conclusion:
1. For a Mac with usb-a and usb-c ports use usb-a to boot macOS in external disk.
2. For a Mac with usb-c only ports, if you encounter the same issue, the only solution is to use a thunderbolt 3 drive.
However, above is for usb 3.1/3.2 10Gbps drive. I have not tested with drive that works with usb4/thunderbold3/usb3.1.
Turns out that this a not well known issue of macOS. For usb external usb drive, sometimes usb-c port of a Mac won't work on booting macOS.
My drive is a usb 3.1 type-c drive. I connect it with my Mac mini over a usb c-c line. That cause the macOS issue. The solution is to change a c-a line. Some how, in that way, and a reinstallation of macOS, everything works.
Conclusion:
1. For a Mac with usb-a and usb-c ports use usb-a to boot macOS in external disk.
2. For a Mac with usb-c only ports, if you encounter the same issue, the only solution is to use a thunderbolt 3 drive.
However, above is for usb 3.1/3.2 10Gbps drive. I have not tested with drive that works with usb4/thunderbold3/usb3.1.
One more thing:
usb-a is slow, it only has 5Gbps in theory. However, I found that I could replace the disk to c-c line after the macOS booting worked. So I could enjoy the speed of 10Gbps again.
Although 10Gbps is 2x of 5Gbps, in reality, the speed is almost 3x, comparing 900MB/s to less than 350MB/s.
usb-a is slow, it only has 5Gbps in theory. However, I found that I could replace the disk to c-c line after the macOS booting worked. So I could enjoy the speed of 10Gbps again.
Although 10Gbps is 2x of 5Gbps, in reality, the speed is almost 3x, comparing 900MB/s to less than 350MB/s.
I had trouble installing as a second boot on a Thunderbolt drive. Had to install Ventura on the second drive first, then update that to Sonoma.
What was the trouble? Sonoma couldn't boot from the drive or couldn't install on it?
Probably the same old story you can't boot from an external SSD due to ongoing bugs in Apple's replicator which affects the latest OS versions.
It seemed to install fine but then failed to boot. Then the drive disappeared. Restarting on the main disk all looked ok. Install on the external disk with Ventura worked without a hitch. The upgrade using the full installer worked fine. I did not try the switch-to-beta mode.
There is an occasional hiccup switching between system disks where it will not properly boot from Sonora on the external disk. Turning it off and back on fixes it.
If I would do it over again, I would have installed on another volume on the main disk, but I would have had to juggle disk space. I have invested too much in having my full system running dual boot. I have a lot of stuff on this environment - apps, Xcode dev with repos, Logic Pro and Final Cut with a bunch of midi.