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Comment by marcan_42

That "bricks" your Mac, and you have to do a DFU restore with Apple Configurator 2 to recover from it.

The SSD on these Macs contains system firmware, including the boot picker and recovery mode. Do not wipe the entire top-level block device. They cannot boot from external media, by design.

M1 Macs are not PCs, and you shouldn't blindly apply whatever you think you know from the PC world. Their low-level design is much closer to an embedded device like a Raspberry Pi, minus the SD card slot. https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-vs.-PC-Boot

It's hard to truly brick these things (you need to wipe NOR flash for that, and even then Apple can fix it without taking them apart, but you can't, because if you wipe NOR flash calibration data is gone and it has to go back through part of the manufacturing test process), but wiping the entire SSD isn't going to help you. If you start messing at that level, you'd better be prepared with another Mac and Apple Configurator 2 to get a proper clean start.

parent marcan_42 5 years ago

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