New 2.3 i7 coming: What steps in which order?

[911scanner]

Current 2010 27" i3 iMac owner. Good with hardware, software not as much. Plenty of work to older PC's in my past.

Today, my new 2.3 i7 Mac Mini arrives, along with 16Gb Ram and Samsung 840 Pro 256Gb. OWC Data doubler kit coming as well.

So, while I think I've got a handle on having all of the hardware & parts I need, and the resources for instructions to tear apart the MM and get it back together, my next steps after SSD install (or prior for that matter) are a bit hazy for me.

Going to keep the HDD along with the SSD in the MM.

Do I want to follow these steps, in this order? Or can someone tell me a better method?

1) Test new MM out of the box to ensure functionality.
2) Install SSD
3) Turn on MM (CMD+R) to do Internet recovery to install fresh OSx on new SSD
4) Recover apps & Home folder from 27" iMac.

Does this sound right?

Do I need to do a TM recovery to the MM HDD from the 27" iMac first, before installing the SSD & getting a fresh OSx install?

My desired outcome is to have most everything onto the MM from the 27" iMac. I have a large itunes file (400Gb), so maybe I need to move that off of the iMac HDD first, so the TM back up is smaller. Then I can recover that file to the MM after everything is setup?

I'm not exactly a newbie, but maybe just a step above that. I want to do it correctly to get the desired outcome, so any advice is welcome.

 

[53x12]

Looks good. There have been several threads on this topic lately as many are getting new mini's this time of the year. A few good threads over the past few days:

Same here. Easiest way to do it (done it twice now), was :

- due the physical work to get the drive in place.
- Boot up holding Command-R to get into Recovery Mode
- Use Terminal to do the Fusion Work
- Restore from Time Machine backup (or, reinstall OS X Fresh and Migrate).

Very easy.

"Also has anyone found a source for the right version of disk utility?"

I believe you already have the tools you need.

Try this (no guarantees, but it should work):
1. Back up the contents of the current drive in the Mini to an external source using CarbonCopyCloner so that it's BOOTABLE. DO NOT USE Time Machine! And TEST your clone before proceeding, to be sure that it will boot the Mini.
2. Install the second drive (that's the SSD drive, correct?)
3. With both drives installed, boot to the recovery partition
4. Once booted from the recovery partition, open Disk Utility
5. At this point, DU should survey the situation, and discover that there are both a HDD and an SSD present, but not "fused".
6. In that case, DU will offer to "repair" the drives -- and in the process of so doing, will -automatically- "fuse them together".
7. When done, you will now have a "fusion drive" (with nothing on it).
8. Reboot from the cloned backup drive
9. RE-CLONE the contents of the backup back to the fusion drive.

When completed, you should have a fusion drive with the contents that were originally on the non-fused HDD drive...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1507074/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1499985/

If you want to create your own fusion drive look here: http://apple.stackexchange.com/ques...ing-recovery-hd-to-a-corestorage-volume-group

Good luck, it shouldn't be too difficult at all.