Apple is moving to make the computer an appliance. However most people are not power users.Īs a power user, I am very annoyed in the direction Apple is taking. Yes, power users will see many disadvantages to this. Fresh copies of applications are downloaded from the App Store, and your data is in the cloud. If there is a software problem, you wipe the disk and reinstall from an authorized, and cryptographically signed/verified Apple server. If there is a hardware problem with the internal drive, you have o replace the motherboard. The goal is to eventually prohibit booting from an external drive. The Mac is moving in the direction of the locked down architecture of iOS. The long term strategy is to maximize security of the platform. No hard disk and what remained was the Mac Superdrive. I could not find a battery replacement for it. Cloned the HD before and ran the laptop from an external boot drive. I had an old MacBook Pro 17' (2009) and when its hard disk started failing, I removed the hard disk. But having the SSD soldered to the motherboard requires a much more expensive repair vs. We better have up-to-date backups just in case a worst-case scenario occurs.Īs the TidBITS article details, it's not very likely that an SSD is going to fail completely and it isn't necessarily the end of the world if it does. If an M1 Mac with a dead SSD cannot be booted from an external drive, it removes a potentially valuable backup capability that we have relied on for years, where the user can keep on operating the Mac until it can be repaired or replaced. I have a 2018 Mac Mini and thankfully I have never needed to use my bootable cloned volume on an external SSD. Maybe a 2018 Intel Mini with a defective SSD would boot from an external drive (instead of dying with an error code), but has anyone ever put that to a test? the current high-end Intel-based Mac Mini) has sealed-in (but upgradeable) RAM – and soldered-in flash (SSD) storage. For instance, the 2018 Intel Mac Mini (a.k.a. Soldered-in flash (SSD) storage is not exclusive to the M1-based Macs. Put the thing into the closet and buy a replacement. Put a new motherboard in it (with a new drive) What this really means is that for all practical purposes, once the drive fails on an m-series Mac, you have two choices:

Mac mini external ssd