I found Booting an M1 Mac from an external disk: it is possible – The Eclectic Light Company.
Is it at all helpful?
Thanks for the input Artie, the Eclectic Light article was my troubleshooting starting point:
Even with that the author makes it sound as if it is a less than perfect procedure.
You got that right Ira, in fact, I would say it is
FAR less than perfect. ðŸ˜
- I am installing to a Samsung X5 SSD that is TB3.
- If I validate the installation using a user on an encrypted volume the installation quits with the error "Unable to transfer ownership of the volume"
- If I validate using a user on an unencrypted volume the installation apparently completes normally, but when the system attempts to boot the newly installed volume the boot fails with a 104 error.
- If I am able to run the install without validating from an existing user on the system (which is NOT easy) the newly installed volume boot fails with an error 104.
- The I get the same result using the Recovery Drive, the installer downloaded from the App Store, and a bootable thumb drive (which is nothing more than the recovery drive with the installer already downloaded but it does save time)
By-the-way using either the downloaded installer package or the bootable thumb drive created from that downloaded installer package to a high speed SSD such as the Samsung X5 only takes 18½ minutes, so I have been able to make lots of trials in a surprisingly short length of time. And before you ask, I have downloaded the installer twice and recreated the thumb drive three times just in case I made an error there.
Color me
bumfuzzled! 😫
I am wondering if this is not a case where the hardware development got ahead of the software developers' ability to foresee all the possible ramifications of changes that were being made or possibly too much bleed over from the iOS/iPadOS side (wait, Apple's building is round so maybe it would be the iOS/iPadOS ring) of the house.
