Setting up new M2 Mini from MacPro 5,1

[deckard666]

I am going from a 2012 MacPro I have had forever obviously running High Sierra to a new M2 Mini Pro (arrived today) - I have never really had to change macs so think it might be best to do as fresh install as there will be a lot of old rubbish on there and I saw -

How to Set Up a New Mac: Should You Migrate or Do a Clean Installation? - The Mac Security Blog

When you set up a new Mac, the Setup Assistant will help you migrate files to the new computer or do a clean installation. Here’s how to set up your new Mac.

www.intego.com

As a guide - you lot have any thoughts ?

I use Carbon Copy Cloner as a backup for the installed SSD boot drive on the MacPro if that is any use....and I will keep a copy of the MP boot drive on a spare drive anyways (as I will have the 4 spare from the internal drives on the MP when it is sent off to its new home !)

I use it mainly for music production so have a ton of plugins / ableton etc

Plus while I am here what is the best /easiest / cheapest way to attach a few of the SATA drives to the Mini as I have one with 4tb of music samples and one with 3tb of FLAC audio music (all backed up with an external WD Elements Usb3 8TB Drive) or should I maybe swap it round and use the WD drive permanently attached to the mini and use the SATAs as back up ?

 

[Fishrrman]

"As a guide - you lot have any thoughts ?
I use Carbon Copy Cloner as a backup for the installed SSD boot drive on the MacPro if that is any use....and I will keep a copy of the MP boot drive on a spare drive anyways"

My suggestions:

Having a CCC cloned backup makes things EASY.

Run a final CCC backup of the old Mac Pro RIGHT NOW, before you boot the Mini for the first time.

When the new Mini arrives, take it out of the box, set it up on the table, and CONNECT THE CCC BACKUP.

Press the power on button.
Begin clicking through the setup.
When setup assistant asks if you wish to migrate from a backup drive, YES, you do.

Point the way to the backup and give SA time to "digest everything". It will take some time.

SA will present you with a checklist of stuff to migrate:
- accounts
- applications
- settings
- data

My recommendation is that you UNCHECK applications, but migrate everything else.

Then, turn SA loose and let it do the job.
When done, you should see your old login screen, just as before.

WHY I am recommending this:
Depending on what OS you were using on the old Mac, it's likely that a good number of your old applications could be outdated -- simply won't run on the new Mini.

BUT -- because you have a cloned backup (and NOT a tm backup), it's possible to test this WITHOUT MIGRATING the [potentially bad] apps over yet.

Once the migration is done, and you are logged into your account on the Mini, try this with the cloned backup STILL CONNECTED:

Start going through your 3rd party apps.
Open the apps folder on the CCC backup, and see if they will run from the backup drive.
REMEMBER -- your app settings and ancillary files were migrated with your accounts during setup... so, if an app can find them, it may still run (or not run).

By doing this, you can test old apps BEFORE you migrate them

For apps that run -- I'd try just copying them from the backup to the applications folder on the Mini. That might be all you need to do.

For those that don't run -- leave them behind, get updates, etc. The updates will probably find your settings files and run pretty much as [the older versions] ran before.

Good luck.

 

[deckard666]

Thanks for that - Yep exactly what I did and Christ this thing flies - like turbo charged - took like 8 mins to copy over my photos to an external Cruical SSD of 250gig which would have taken my MacPro hours..

The migrate worked perfectly by the way and that was from High Sierra to Sonoma which must be a fairly extreme operating system migrate.

Just messing around getting it how I like it with all the extra options like widgets etc and took me a while to realise that the way to change the tiny fons everywhere (as now on a 4k HDR 31" monitor was not to alter the settings separately but change in display as Apple didn't make it clear in Settings that that didnt change the rez....which was what I and loads of others thought too....

Absolutely silent too so far and I might be tempted by a 1tb 3.2 Gen 2 1TB USB C stick for 80 quid which would sort out having a spare scratch drive

https://www.kingston.com/unitedkingdom/ ... ctor=usb-c

Everything else (the 2tb of flac files, 3 tb samples and 2tb HDR 4k video) is sitting on my WD Elements USB 3 hard drive so thats good too.

All in all a fantastic machine and for 875 pounds an absolute bargain !