Mirror Laptop to external SSD and booth it from Desktop iMac?

[docbot]

My Macbook is kinda slow these days, but i have access to faster iMacs at my University.
Since Mac have something called "Target Mode" to boot from a external harddrive, I was wondering
if I somehow can mirror my entire Laptop harddrive to an external SSD and then simply use target mode to boot from it
using a faster iMac.

Is this possible or will I run into issues since the hardware is different, etc?

how would I best go about doing this?

Thank you!

 

[Fishrrman]

What version of the OS is running on your MacBook?
What version of the OS is running on the school's iMacs?
What kind of drive is INSIDE of your MacBook?
Can it be upgraded?

I believe you can use target disk mode to connect the MacBook to one of the iMacs, but you can't BOOT the iMac from the MB drive. So that's out.

What you MIGHT be able to do:
- Get an external USB3 SSD
- Set it up to be an external boot drive (the version of the OS on it would have to be capable of booting one of the school's iMacs)
- Boot/run the iMac that way.
(It might be possible that the school has set up the iMacs so that they can't be booted from external drives -- don't know that)

IF your MacBook is using a version of the OS that is capable of booting the iMac(s), then you could try this:
- Get an external SSD
- Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper (both are FREE to download and use for 30 days) to clone the contents of the MB to the external SSD (thus creating a boot SSD)
- Use that to boot/run the iMac(s).

 

[docbot]

What version of the OS is running on your MacBook?
What version of the OS is running on the school's iMacs?
What kind of drive is INSIDE of your MacBook?
Can it be upgraded?

I believe you can use target disk mode to connect the MacBook to one of the iMacs, but you can't BOOT the iMac from the MB drive. So that's out.

What you MIGHT be able to do:
- Get an external USB3 SSD
- Set it up to be an external boot drive (the version of the OS on it would have to be capable of booting one of the school's iMacs)
- Boot/run the iMac that way.
(It might be possible that the school has set up the iMacs so that they can't be booted from external drives -- don't know that)

IF your MacBook is using a version of the OS that is capable of booting the iMac(s), then you could try this:
- Get an external SSD
- Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper (both are FREE to download and use for 30 days) to clone the contents of the MB to the external SSD (thus creating a boot SSD)
- Use that to boot/run the iMac(s).

Hey there,

I am running Catalina, but the iMacs at school run Mojave. I have a SSD inside my Macbook, upgrading it won't change the fact that it's slow.

My plan was to get a M2 NVMe + case that has the same size and use CarbonCopycloner to just clone my harddrive on the SSD, but I have no clue if the iMac will simply start up when trying to boot from it. Are there any kind of system/hardware relevant software component in macOS that makes an installation specific to the machine it's installed on (drivers etc?).

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

The plan sounds good to me -- assuming the iMacs can handle Catalina (which is only one OS release "after" Mojave, so the chances are fairly good).