03-19-2025, 11:30 PM
Special,
You can definitely use an external SSD as the boot drive for an M series machine. One of my brothers does it with his Mac Studio. My other brother does it with an Mac Mini M2 and a Mac Mini M4. I just did it for a Mac Mini M4 Pro. Making it happen is a process but a pretty easy one.
I configured the M4 Pro Mini to boot off an NVME SSD in an OWC Envoy Pro SX. Changed the boot settings of the Mini, installed the OS on the external, booted into it, used Migration Assistant to move over everything from the boot drive of one of my other machines. Rebooted using option to let me select the external drive as the boot drive and it was good to go. Once booted, I made sure to adjust the Startup Disk setting to make the external the permanent boot drive.
The whole process took only a couple of hours to get the mini near 100% operational. Shockingly easy, too.
Robert
You can definitely use an external SSD as the boot drive for an M series machine. One of my brothers does it with his Mac Studio. My other brother does it with an Mac Mini M2 and a Mac Mini M4. I just did it for a Mac Mini M4 Pro. Making it happen is a process but a pretty easy one.
I configured the M4 Pro Mini to boot off an NVME SSD in an OWC Envoy Pro SX. Changed the boot settings of the Mini, installed the OS on the external, booted into it, used Migration Assistant to move over everything from the boot drive of one of my other machines. Rebooted using option to let me select the external drive as the boot drive and it was good to go. Once booted, I made sure to adjust the Startup Disk setting to make the external the permanent boot drive.
The whole process took only a couple of hours to get the mini near 100% operational. Shockingly easy, too.
Robert