Please suggest restore from TimeMachine on new Catalina install

[rjalex]

Dear friends,
my old late 2009 iMac has broken down. It ran Sierra and had updated TimeMachine backups to 2 weeks ago.

As I'm cash strapped for now I have a 2015 Macbook that will take its place. I just installed a new install of Catalina on the latter.

While I think it will be straightforward to restore my User files, I am confused with the opportunity of restoring some important Apps from the old machine's backup to the new one. Is it feasible? Is it a good idea or should I just install them over from scratch on the new machine and go though their customization/setup once anew?

TIA

 

[mikzn]

Check out info about migration assistant - that is what I would do

Transfer to a new Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support

Use Migration Assistant to copy your files from another computer.

support.apple.com

you should be able to use the info on the Time Machine Back up to migrate info and apps

 

[ApfelKuchen]

It's feasible to install some apps, others are best reinstalled, some (32-bit apps) won't run at all.

You didn't mention which OS you had on the old iMac - High Sierra 10.13.6 would have been the maximum possible.

My own feeling is to transfer all apps, then find and delete/replace only those that no longer work, starting with those whose icons are grayed-out and have the prohibitory sign (circle with diagonal line) superimposed over the icon. You'll see that for all 32-bit apps. In general, you can expect you'll need to reinstall Microsoft Office from scratch.

 

[rjalex]

Thank you all very much. I had Sierra on the old machine as 10.13 made it very slow and I reverted back to 10.12

So you suggestions would be to use this "migration assistant" with the timemachine backup to restore and then fix the ones that don't work, right?

 

[HDFan]

my old late 2009 iMac has broken down. It ran Sierra and had updated TimeMachine backups to 2 weeks ago.

As I'm cash strapped for now I have a 2015 Macbook that will take its place. I just installed a new install of Catalina on the latter.

How current are the apps on the 2009 iMac?

My own feeling is to transfer all apps, then find and delete/replace only those that no longer work,

I would first do a fresh install of all apps where you can download current Catalina installers. When these are not available then use older installers, then Migration assistant, and hope they work. Be careful with older programs which have daemons or launch agents.

 

[rjalex]

Ok that's a good idea. Most apps on the old dead machine were ok but a few (eg Lightroom) had been kept backlevel since they would not install on the old Sierra MacOS.
Thanks a lot.

 

[posguy99]

Aside from security issues, I'm not understanding why you didn't just put Sierra on the 2015 MBP? Yes, yes, no security patches. But you'd already bit on that. It'd be a straight-across restore.

 

[rjalex]

Because Sierra held me back from some welcome newer versions of some of my important apps such as Lightroom, so if I have to start a new machine I'd guessed it wasn't a bad idea to bring MacOS to currency.
Thanks!

 

[Ben J.]

I went from Sierra on an old mac pro 3,1 to 10.15.3 on a 2017 imac. Clean install and did a clone. I used Migration Assistant to transfer everything, and without going into details, it was a shambles. Restored the clean install and used MA with "Programs" option deselected, and it worked out just fine.
My advice is to clean install, do a migration of settings and documents, and then install applications manually.

 

[rjalex]

That makes a lot of sense. It might also be the occasion to NOT reinstall seldom used apps which cropped up some time in the past
So does 10-15 run aok on your 2017 iMac? Is it a vanilla machine or did you exchange the HDD with an SSD?
Thank you very much.

 

[Ben J.]

Of course, Catalina is 64 bit only, so many apps will not work and a rebuild is inevitable in a sense. But AM without "programs" option, helped a lot transferring system settings, passwords, licenses etc, and saved me a lot of work. Six months on, everything is great, I'm on 10.15.6 and the latest Adobe apps, and Avid Pro Tools (known to be extremely "fragile"). I have two OWC external SSDs on TB3 for system, photo, and audio media files. The imac is allright, as long as I don't boot from the internal 1GB hybrid internal. The difference is big with the fast SSDs.