Thus, if the internal disk has Catalina installed and you then install Big Sur on an external disk mounted on that Mac, both the firmware and Recovery software is updated to that supplied with Big Sur. These can be inadvertently erased, forcing you to use Internet Recovery or Internet Diagnostics instead.įirmware, covering the firmware proper and Recovery tools, is updated to the latest version whenever a newer version of macOS is installed on any mounted disk, whether internal or external. ![]() They are both installed as disk images, named BaseSystem.dmg and AppleDiagnostics.dmg respectively, which are mounted and run from memory on demand. Although most of this is reliably updated by installing macOS updates, two components have in the past been vulnerable to failure, recoveryOS and AppleDiagnostics. These are based on a foundation of Intel’s UEFI, with Recovery tools written as UEFI apps and for a cut-down version of macOS known as recoveryOS. These models lack any support for Secure Boot, and rely on a combination of fixed ROM, upgradeable firmware, and software stored on the boot disk. The answer to these questions depends on which architecture your Mac has, and how it stores and maintains the different parts of what we loosely refer to as firmware. Let me ask you a simple question: supposing you installed the Monterey beta on an external disk, what would happen to that Mac’s firmware and its Recovery features? Given that Monterey is likely to bring firmware updates to most if not all Macs, how might that affect yours? That’s what I try to answer in this article – and it’s of great importance to all those who install beta-releases, as well as everyone considering upgrading in the autumn/fall.
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