MP 7,1 Migrating Catalina between 2019 Mac Pros

[choreo]

There is a good possibility that Apple "may" be sending me a new replacement Mac Pro any day now.

If that happens, I will be physically moving all my PCI Cards, Hard Drives (in J3i), and Ram to the new machine, however, I am curious what the "best" method would be to migrate all of my apps, settings, etc. over to the new Mac's internal SSD. I have several options, but not sure which is the best method.

Physically I have:

• 8-TB spinning internal hard drive in the J3i that would have a current TM Backup
• Samsung 2.5" SSD mounted to an internal Sonnet Tempo PCI card that would have a current CCC Clone Backup
• An External USB Samsung SSD that I could use to perform either a current TM or CCC backup to before the transfer

When I initially set-up my current Mac Pro, I took the external Samsung USB SSD and did a TM backup from my 2015 MacBook Pro which was running the same version of Catalina - that seemed to work fine, but I have more options now and I have really done a lot of work cleaning out files, reinstalling apps, etc. on my Mac Pro since then - so I want to transfer everything in the safest way possible. I am guessing reformatting the external USB SSD may be the way to go, but not sure if doing a TM backup or CCC Clone of my current boot drive may be best with migration assistant this time? I have always used TM with migration assistant, never tried restoring via CCC.

Any thoughts?

 

[profdraper]

Time machine migration only provides transfer from the Catalina data partition (apps, prefs, accounts etc) after beginning a clean install of the OS. CCC bootable backup copies everything - system and data & in my experience this is fast and reliable.

Time Machine can produce fine grained 'mistakes' depending on how much 3rd party is installed & which might include key authorisations etc; some apps also require to be de-authorised from old computer first (ScreenFlow for example); others do simply not support Time Machine migration (Native Instruments for example).

So, if its a simple build, Time Machine can work well, plus you get the potential benefit of a clean OS install. CCC bootable backup works perfectly (including for tricky 3rd party licences) and literally makes a clone of both APFS system and data volumes to the new destination. At least, that's the way its been for me ... hope that helps.

 

[choreo]

Still not sure on the best way for me to proceed?

Here is where I am...

• I have the Apple supplied 1TB SSD currently split into (2) APFS volumes - both with Catalina installed (Apple Tech Support made me create a second volume and use Disc Recovery to reinstall the OS on it for diagnosis).
• I have a Samsung 2.5" APFS SSD mounted to an internal Sonnet Tempo PCI card that has a current CCC Clone Backup of my current boot volume.

What I want to do is start over fresh and reformat the Apple startup SSD into a single APFS volume and then migrate all my files over from my internal Sonnet PCI SSD. Is that possible? What would the steps be?

 

[Yebubbleman]

It's my understanding that, as far as non-manual data restores involving T2 Macs are concerned, restoring via a method that ISN'T the migration assistant is a massive pain. I'm a huge proponent of starting as much from scratch as possible (which, if you're migrating home folder data is not so bad; but if you're migrating apps and plugins with complex installations might be a total pain). I hate the migration assistant for being messy (I find it only works well when you're going from the same system with the same OS to essentially a replacement drive on that same system with the same OS) and I'm not huge on restoring from CCC either (let alone on a T2 Mac). But that's just me.

 

[Graham King]

If it was me I’d do more of a manual restore: reinstall apps one by one, drag and drop files and folders, redo all your settings and preferences. That way you can be certain you’re not bringing any bugs over from the old system that was causing your problems.