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Turnpike

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 2, 2011
587
326
New York City!
I have an iMac Pro that has tons of details, settings, etc... files and everything everywhere, in a way that I know exactly where everything is, I've been on this thing for the last 2 years for 60hrs/wk (at least) and it's mapped out (disorganized, sure) to exactly a way I'm familiar with everything I use/do/saved on it.

I need to turn in the iMac Pro back to work, is there a way I can literally clone everything and put it onto another regular 27" imac? not iCloud files, etc... but everything with multiple browsers, the files and settings the way they are, etc...

I won't be using it for heavy projects.
The destination iMac is a 2019 27" iMac with the same 1TB storage as the iMac Pro.
I don't know what to look at or explore to do what I'm thinking of- I'm happy to pay for a software to do this if I need to.
And I'm fine with updating both computers to be the same version of MacOS too.

Is there an obvious solution that someone would suggest?

Thanks in advance.
 
"Is there an obvious solution that someone would suggest?"

Yes there is.
CarbonCopyCloner.
Get it here:
Carbon Copy Cloner - Download

CCC is FREE to use for the first 30 days.
So... don't RUN IT until you actually need to USE IT.

Use CCC to clone the contents of the iMac Pro to an external USB3 drive.
Then, you can try "re-cloning" the cloned backup to the 2019 iMac.
I'm going to -guess- that it will boot and run fine.

IF it doesn't, the alternative route:
Boot to internet recovery and erase the entire drive on the 2019 iMac
Then, use the internet recovery OS installer to install a fresh copy of the OS
Then, run the setup assistant. When setup assistant asks if you wish to migrate from another drive, connect your cloned backup and accept all the defaults.
Let setup assistant do the migration for you.

But... the preferred way (at least for me), would be the "reclone" option above.
 
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