Restoring to new machine with a smaller hard drive

[jcmc]

Hi there,

I have a large capacity SATA drive for my ageing iMac and am looking to acquire a MacBook Pro with a smaller SSD drive - probably 512gb - running in tandem with an external 1gb SSD 1gb.

My big items size wise are my Photos and iTunes libraries which i would want to site on the external drive, so I was wondering how you can restore selectively from a back up when the back up size is larger than the destination drive.

I don't need to bring everything across anyway but in an ideal world I could pick and choose applications and of course copy them to a combination of the laptop SSD and the external one.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Regards,

C.

 

[chabig]

The first thing I would do would be to copy your iTunes and Photos folders from your old Mac to your external drive.

Then run Migration assistant on the new machine. You can choose to restore from a Time Machine backup and there you select what you want to bring over. Do not restore the Photos or iTunes folders. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204350

After you've migrated to the new Mac, tell Photos and iTunes where their libraries are located. (I believe you hold the option key down as you launch each of those apps.)

 

[jcmc]

Ah great, thank you.

 

[Fishrrman]

Will this be a NEW MBP, or a used one?
That's important information.

How I would do it with a NEW one:

Get an external drive.

Use CarbonCopyCloner (or SuperDuper) to create a cloned backup of your current (large) drive that's in the iMac.

When the new MBP arrives, DON'T turn it on just yet.
Connect the cloned backup, NOW press the power on button for the first time.

You will boot to setup assistant. Begin setup.

At the appropriate moment, setup assistant will ask if you with to migrate from an older computer or drive. YES, you want to do this, so....

..."Aim" setup assistant at the external cloned backup. Let setup assistant "digest" everything that's on it. THIS WILL TAKE A LITTLE TIME. Be patient.

Setup assistant will now present you with a list of things that can be migrated:
Apps
Accounts
Settings
Data

We need to "be selective" here.
Go into the "Accounts" area, and DEselect the following folders:
Documents
Movies
Music
Pictures
(this is where the bulk of your files are, right? If not, you may have to proceed otherwise).

Once this is done, turn setup assistant loose.
AGAIN, IT'S GOING TO TAKE TIME, so again, be patient.

What this does is migrate everything EXCEPT those "large libraries".
They will be "left behind" on the backup drive.

You can now move these libraries to an EXTERNAL drive, and then "re-direct" the apps that use them to "look for them" on the external drive when needed.

 

[jcmc]

Interesting thanks. I would be purchasing a second hand MBP - does that change this process at all?

 

[Fishrrman]

"I would be purchasing a second hand MBP - does that change this process at all?"

In that case, things may be more complicated.
It depends on WHAT KIND OF CONDITION the MBP arrives in.

Will it have a completely new OS install?
Or will you accept "the existing install" and go from there?

 

[jcmc]

I must admit I hadn’t thought that far ahead on this.