My work purchased me a new iMac a few weeks ago that I assume is going to ship with Catalina since Big Sur was not yet released. My current iMac, I upgraded to Big Sur. It is from 2014 so it was never enrolled in their management software they now use. I will not be allowed to update the new iMac to Big Sur until their virus software is Big Sur compatible. Can I still use migration assistant to migrate my profile and apps over to the new iMac which will be running an older OS, Catalina? I realize some apps like Garage Band will not transfer over because the new version does not work with Catalina, it's mainly my parallels VMs and few other odd ball apps and files I want to make sure go over correctly. I will put the older, Big Sur mac in target disc mode and run Migration Assistant on the new, Catalina Mac. Thanks.
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Migration assistant, Big Sur to Catalina
- Thread starter abeasom
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Migration Assistant moves over data and settings. Having used it, you are in control what moves over. I don't see any issues. Anybody else namely a tech who works with apple might give some more info would help. One suggestion, is a tech who has a facebook forum.
It took me a day to roll my friend’s 2014 MacBook Air back to Mojave. Big Sur did something to the files which made Migration Assistant not work. I did everything manually. I rolled the Mac back past Catalina so some legacy apps would work again.
This was hard to do. Apple did not want to let me install an older os on a Mac that formerly had Big Sur. I found some workarounds and finally got Mojave installed and her old files restored, including the photos, which was a real bear. Note: this Mac was not properly backed up in iCloud which would have helped a lot.
At the end of the day the Air was running buttery smooth. 😅
This was hard to do. Apple did not want to let me install an older os on a Mac that formerly had Big Sur. I found some workarounds and finally got Mojave installed and her old files restored, including the photos, which was a real bear. Note: this Mac was not properly backed up in iCloud which would have helped a lot.
At the end of the day the Air was running buttery smooth. 😅
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I assumed you erased the volumes on your ssd to what they were. Big Sur added a special SSV volume when upgrading. That's probably why you were having an issue. A special volume created a snapshot. The only way to get rid of it, you would have to deleted that volume in recovery mode.
I did so after a lot of failed attempts. I wish I had read up on that special volume beforehand.