Used macOS with an external hard drive

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Antho

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#317716 8-Nov-2024 21:54

Hello everyone,

I’m a developer, I have a 2020 MacBook Pro M1 at home and I use a Mac mini M2 at work. Both machines have 16GB and 32GB of RAM, but limited storage (~250GB). I’ve noticed that the storage fills up pretty quickly, even though I clean up regularly, and it’s the system data that takes up a huge amount of space. Anyway, I’ve realized that both machines struggle to keep up when the storage is full.

I was thinking of buying an external hard drive with a large capacity, but I don’t think it will be enough because it’s not my projects that are using up the most storage, but rather the software.

So, I’m considering installing macOS on the external drive to make it bootable. I’d even like to install my development software, like Xcode, Visual Studio, etc., everything I need, and work directly from that external drive across both machines.

Has anyone tried this setup before? Would it work? Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of?

Thanks in advance for your responses! :)

lxsw20

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#3307092 8-Nov-2024 22:35

99% sure that isn't do-able with an modern Mac.

jamesrt

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#3307093 8-Nov-2024 22:40

That's certainly do-able; but in my experience it will be very SLOW - the performance drop compared to having the OS on the internal SSD is very noticeable.

As far as I'm aware; there's nothing stopping you running Applications from the external drive; they don't need to be installed on the internal SSD.

The way you've worded it makes it sound like you'd use the same external drive on either machine; which is possible for data storage; but I'm not sure would work as a boot device for both platforms.

gehenna

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#3307102 9-Nov-2024 06:55

It's doable but it will be a very poor experience if you anticipate performance parity. There's a reason Apple can price gouge for extra internal storage.

Behodar

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#3307111 9-Nov-2024 08:20

lxsw20:

99% sure that isn't do-able with an modern Mac.

It is. The Mac hardware will only run the bootloader from the internal storage, but it's possible to configure the bootloader to "hand off" to another drive to actually load the OS proper.

SpartanVXL

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#3307116 9-Nov-2024 09:30

Do modern macs not have tb3/4? Not sure why it would be slow if you get an external nvme enclosure and appropriate ssd.

I know there was issues with earlier arm macs and lower speeds, if OP is fine with that then it would still work decently enough. Better than having no space all the time.