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Migration Mac Pro 5,1 to Mac Studio [solved]

MacSince1985

MacSince1985

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 18, 2009
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I’m trying to migrate one user from my old Mac Pro to my new Mac Studio.

When I connect both Mac via Ethernet, Migration Assistant stays stuck on “checking Mac Pro” for hours. Apple says it should take a few minutes.

I then made a clone of the Mac Pro drive and connected it to the Mac Studio. The Mac Studio sees the drive but Migration Assistant does not.

For info, the user account on the Mac Pro is on a separate drive than the boot drive. It’s on a PCI raid so I can’t connect it directly to the Mac Studio.

Suggestions appreciated.
 
I don’t have such an adapter.
Apple support said both machines need to be on the same WIFI network. The on-screen instructions simply say same network and the Mac Pro wifi is non functional.
They also recommend doing a Time Machine backup and using that instead of the SuperDuper clone. That’s taking forever.
 
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… 5 hours remaining, to copy 475gb of data to a USB3 ssd. Time Machine is slow, even with throttling turned of.
 
It’s Catalina 10.15.7 (opencore). It sped up a bit (2 hours remaining) so I hope to be able to connect the backup to tha Mac Studio tonight and let the migration process overnight. Goal is to be up and running by Monday morning.
 
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MacSince1985 said:
It’s Catalina 10.15.7 (opencore). It sped up a bit (2 hours remaining) so I hope to be able to connect the backup to tha Mac Studio tonight and let the migration process overnight. Goal is to be up and running by Monday morning.
Click to expand...
Which Xeon chip are you upgrading from? I see chip SKUs from 2009-2011. Pls let us know how it feels jumping from a 45-32nm chip to a 5nm one.
 
The Mac Pro has dual 3.46GHz processor. Still running well And I’m keeping if as a second workstation. Haven’t put the Studio though it’s paces yet.
Back on topic: the TM backup completed and is recognized by Migration Assistant.
 
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MacSince1985 said:
The Mac Pro has dual 3.46GHz processor. Still running well And I’m keeping if as a second workstation. Haven’t put the Studio though it’s paces yet.
Back on topic: the TM backup completed and is recognized by Migration Assistant.
Click to expand...
Looking forward to your feedback on the dozen year jump!
 
OP wrote:
"As a reminder, Migration Assistant from Mac to Mac and from clone to Mac did not work. But from Time Machine backup, it worked."

That was not CCC's fault.
CCC will "clone" the contents of the boot volume.
Files stored elsewhere (i.e., on other drives) will not be part of the clone. The user account you mentioned would not be included for that reason.

That's the way it works. SuperDuper would have done the same thing.
 
Longplays said:
How's your new 2023 Mac Studio compared to your dozen old Mac Pro?
Click to expand...
Too early to tell. Mostly setting things up and installing software so far. The OS is just different enough that it takes some adjusting to.

I did a quick test in Blender and it definitely renders faster.
 
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TM has always been the preferred way for cross-OSX-version migration, or at least that's what Apple wants people to use. The best part is that it can go from old version to new OS version just as your case, even when the two Macs have no overlapping versions supported.

And on your attempts; why did you expect Migration Assistant to know how to deal with your CCC clone? Like said it can only understand TM backups either bare metal or network sparsebundles. Then of course live and running machines but as you know that route isn't that smooth.

For my small business we maintain a dozen of Macs, I have learned to use a 2TB TB3 NVMe SSD that keeps TM backups of each Mac for fast restore purposes. Modern TM can use APFS volumes so you don't need to worry about the partition reaching its size limit.

EDIT: turns out I was talking nonsense, Migration Assistant is supposed to be able to restore from CCC et al.
 
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chancha wrote:
"why did you expect Migration Assistant to know how to deal with your CCC clone? Like said it can only understand TM backups either bare metal or network sparsebundles"

This statement IS COMPLETELY WRONG, 100%.

Cloned backups created by CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper WORK JUST FINE when using setup assistant (during first boot) or migration assistant.

I have done more than one this way, myself.
I have assisted two friends, both of whom were using cloned backups, who also did successful migrations.

In NONE of the above cases did any of us use backups created by time machine.
Again, that statement is "just plain wrong".
 
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Fishrrman said:
chancha wrote:
"why did you expect Migration Assistant to know how to deal with your CCC clone? Like said it can only understand TM backups either bare metal or network sparsebundles"

This statement IS COMPLETELY WRONG, 100%.

Cloned backups created by CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper WORK JUST FINE when using setup assistant (during first boot) or migration assistant.

I have done more than one this way, myself.
I have assisted two friends, both of whom were using cloned backups, who also did successful migrations.

In NONE of the above cases did any of us use backups created by time machine.
Again, that statement is "just plain wrong".
Click to expand...
Wow. Thanks for pointing that out, I was indeed plain wrong. Never knew you could do this.

But I wonder where I got my impression from, because I (had) used CCC probably more than a decade ago and really don't recall it having this ability. Or did Apple add this in Migration Assistant?
 
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Thanks for all the replies. I hope this discussion will help old timers like me who find themselves in a similar situation. Back in the old days, you cloned a drive, popped it into the new machine and it worked.

  1. I assume the backup from the clone didn't work because of my particular setup (OS and user data on separate volumes).
  2. The network migration did not work either for the same reason or because of the lack of wifi on the Mac Pro.
  3. Migration from a Time Machine backup worked very well. Google how to disable throttling to speed the backup.
 
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I myself have just moved from cMP to Mac Studio....:p
Although MP will remain networked for screen sharing.

I am really impressed with the Studio.
I just can't get used to how quiet it is (after 12+ years with cMP with it's many fans firing up when woken from sleep).
It is just silent, like my iPad....;)....woww.

I didn't bother with migration, just re-installed what I needed most.
I have over a decade of software versions on the MP, and loads of stuff that is rarely used, so a good opportunity for a cleanup.

I will say it again.....wow so quiet (and so much less power usage).
 
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