What remains to be seen is whether Apple or one of its partners (all usual suspects like OWC) are going to offer empty Mac Studio upgrade SSD modules that will have to be installed by Apple's authorized partners. Finally, it we presume it is impossible to clone a boot drive unless Apple adds appropriate feature to MacOS.

Furthermore, it looks like it will not be possible to take secondary SSD from one Mac Studio and install it into another one since it is encrypted using another Apple security processor.

While this is done in a bid to prevent stealing data from a drive, this looks like an overkill since it is easier to steal the fairly compact system and brute-force its password rather than trying to break an AES-256 encryption.įor now, it is evident that it is impossible to upgrade a Mac Studio using a boot drive from another Mac Studio. Furthermore, it looks like Apple's security mechanism is so sophisticated that it does not allow a system with an unfamiliar drive in its secondary SSD slot to boot. This is why it is impossible to use a boot drive from one Mac Studio to boot up another Mac Studio. Let us try to explain why.Īpple's SSD controller (3D NAND flash controller) encrypts data on-the-fly, stores encryption keys and ties the SSD module (or 3D NAND chips in case of soldered-down storage) to itself creating a hardware root-of-trust. What Miami did not try was to install the secondary SSD from one Mac Studio into secondary SSD slot of another one as he did not have a Mac Studio with both slots populated.įor now, Miami has failed to upgrade one of his Mac Studio desktops with an SSD module from another one, but his experiment does not really prove that Apple's Mac Studio cannot be upgraded at all.

The system neither turned on nor started blinking SOS.

Then, Miami took a boot drive from one Mac Studio and installed it into primary SSD slot of another one.

This did not work, which is strange, but perhaps Apple's firmware does not allow booting from the secondary slot for security or other reasons.

Miami also tried booting one Mac Studio from its own SSD inserted into the secondary slot.

While you typically expect a PC to at least recognize such drive, but may not be able to properly use since it is encrypted, the system did not actually boot at all. This might not be particularly surprising as he used a boot drive with MacOS on it. Mac Studio failed to boot and its LED started to blink SOS with a morse code.

Tried installing an SSD from one Mac Studio into another Mac Studio's secondary SSD slot.

Over the course of his experiment, he did the following: Luke Miami, a YouTube journalist specializing on Apple products, obtained two Mac Studio desktops and tried to install an SSD module from one system to another in a bid to find out how easy it is to upgrade such a PC.

Mac hard drive replacement