I repeated the process with another USB stick and once again failed. Since my MacBook's model is listed as a T2 device, I went to look for the setting to change it but it didn't show up as an option in Startup Security Utility. Even though the USB is recognized and shows up as a drive, the drive wouldn't show up on the recovery screen as a bootable installer.Īfter further research, I learned that macs with the T2 security chip needed extra permission to boot from external media. The issue came up when I tried booting the mac from the drive. I followed guide videos and websites and I was able to create a bootable installer of Big Sur on a USB stick. How can I get this M1 to boot into the external SSD?īootable installer won't recognize on 2020 M1 Macbook air I updated my mac to the latest version of Monterey and decided that I wanted to revert back to Big Sur after some compatibility issues. Guess what, yep, you guessed it, it says I can't use it because it needs to be 'updated' - even though it is the current version of macOS (11.01).īTW, I tried the Startup Security Utility as shown here So I formatted my SSD and reinstalled 11.01 onto it. It then said I had the wrong version of macOS, even though the internal SSD had the same exact version (11.01). It said I needed to reinstall 11.01 all over again, so I tried, but it got halfway and then said there was an error and it stopped installing. I thought I would just plug it in the M1 and it would work, since it has the same OS version as the internal SSD, but it wouldn't let me. I recently bought a 2018-2019 Mac Mini and was using my external SSD just fine with it, but now with the M1 it is having all kinds of connectivity issues. Hi, I bought the new Mac Mini M1 and would like to use it with a external 1TB SSD.

External hard drive for mac mini m1