Help with transition from one Mac Mini to another.

[Ben J.]

Hello.
I gotten some really good help on this great forum before, so I'm hoping for some help yet again.

I'm expecting a new, used mac mini to be delivered in a day or two. Allthough I've used macs for over 30 years and have done transitions of hardware and software many times before, I'm a little unshure of a couple of things this time.

I now have a 2018 mini, i3 16gb 128gb running smoothly with Pro Tools and Lightroom as main work apps. The new mini is also 2018, but with i5 32gb and 256 disk. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for backup and restoration.

I know that these are pretty much identical in design, so I'm expecting to be able to just restore my CCC clone to the new mac and that would be it.

But what about apple ID, and "machine ID"?
I have many plugin licenses that is registred to the mac id or the drive, Im not shure. I'll just have to test and take it up with the manufacturer, I guess. Cloud licenses are fine.

And Apple ID, will it work on the new mini liike nothing happened?
What if I run the old and the new mini at the same time?
Will they have different "identities" in the cloud?

Any thoughts?
Should I not worry about it?

 

[Dave Braine]

I know that these are pretty much identical in design, so I'm expecting to be able to just restore my CCC clone to the new mac and that would be it.

Why not just use Apple's Migration Assistant? Then your Account plus all it's settings will be transferred across to your new Mini. Do it during the initial setup. If you do it later you could end up with two Accounts on the new Mini.

And Apple ID, will it work on the new mini liike nothing happened?

Yes. It's your Apple ID(not the computers) linked to your email and password, so can b e used on multiple devices.

 

[Ben J.]

Why not just use Apple's Migration Assistant? Then your Account plus all it's settings will be transferred across to your new Mini.

Several reasons.
I've found it to be unreliable, and I've experience with it since it first came. But I have also found it quite useful sometimes. I found that it does not work good with Avid Pro Tools, ever. But if you uncheck "programs" in the MA options, and it works good in my experience.

My plan is; I connect the disk with my bootable CCC clone and clone that disk to the new mac mini. I can't see why that's not the easiest and shurest way to do it.

 

[||\||]

I would clone to an external and boot from that to test your plug-ins.

 

[Ben J.]

I would clone to an external and boot from that to test your plug-ins.

Sorry, I explained badly; I have a removable drive with a bootable clone of my original mini disk, I will boot from this eksternal on my new mini, and use CCC to clone the disk to the new mini internal.

 

[||\||]

Sorry, I explained badly; I have a removable drive with a bootable clone of my original mini disk, I will boot from this eksternal on my new mini, and use CCC to clone the disk to the new mini internal.

The clone you have on the external dive will tell you if everything on the new machine will work. Connect the external clone and boot from it on the new machine. If your plug-ins sync up on the external boot, it will do the same on the new machine.

 

[Ben J.]

I will then have two mac minis with identical footprints.
Except what, a "system id" of some sort?
I'm shure apple has a way to tell them apart and I'll see them both in "my devices", but this is kinda new ground for me.

 

[Ben J.]

The clone you have on the external dive will tell you if everything on the new machine will work. Connect the external clone and boot from it on the new machine. If your plug-ins sync up on the external boot, it will do the same on the new machine.

Of course.

 

[chrfr]

Of course.

You should make sure that the new Mini is on the same version of macOS or higher before you try to clone the other disk to it, otherwise there may be firmware mismatches which can cause unexpected operation. These firmware updates are only applied when the OS is updated, so cloning would skip over that process.

 

[Ben J.]

Thanks.
The new mini is erased, and it had big sur on it bfore. no problem.
I'll be cloning a catalina on it.

This isn't really what I asked about.
How abouut you read my Original Post again?

 

[chrfr]

Thanks.
The new mini is erased, and it had big sur on it bfore. no problem.
I'll be cloning a catalina on it.

This isn't really what I asked about.
How abouut you read my Original Post again?

It's not that simple; the latest Catalina security update installs later firmware which matches what's on 11.2.3 so there still might be a mismatch. Good luck.

 

[Ben J.]

I'm glad to report that my plan worked fine.
I cloned the drive of the i3 mini to the drive of the i5 mini and everything works.

There were some snags like I expected, with Apple ID and stuff, but it's fixed and it saved me a LOT of work with migration assistant and setting up everything that I've fine tuned over the last year.

My apple id was the biggest bump, it was confused and gave errors, and I had to type my ID and password so many times I've forgotten. It also caused some secondary issues. But after some time Apple ID is happy again and it even can differentiate the two minis with the same name, it just puts (2) after the name of one of them.

Another thing was bluetooth devices. Believe it or not, I have no less than 3 keyboards and 3 mice around the room. And I need them all, it works for me. I had to "release" them from the i3 and set up connection on the i5. No problem.
And, of course some cloud licenses had to be fixed.

But all this took me an evening, and I'm super happy.

Yesterday: 2018 Mac Mini, quad core i3, 16gb ram and 128 flash drive.
Today: 2018 Mac Mini, six core i5, 32gb ram and 256 flash drive.

I'll be selling the old mini, and I expect the upgrade will have cost me less than $200us.