Setting up new iMac with only what's critical...

[PokerGuy]

Hi there - setting up my brand new iMac this weekend (replacing 2010 model)

I want to start over clean as much as possible, and only transfer what is neccesary...Really this will be just my contacts, music and a few other things - Can I just set up the new iMac to sync contacts with icloud in the same way my iPhone X does? And then start backing up with TimeMachine once I have content on the new computer as time goes on? The last thing I want to do is put EVERYTHING onto the new one that I have on the existing one as I am happy to just dump it all onto an external drive to access as/when needed.

Any advice much appreciated

Thanks

 

[gian8989]

Hi there - setting up my brand new iMac this weekend (replacing 2010 model)

I want to start over clean as much as possible, and only transfer what is neccesary...Really this will be just my contacts, music and a few other things - Can I just set up the new iMac to sync contacts with icloud in the same way my iPhone X does? And then start backing up with TimeMachine once I have content on the new computer as time goes on? The last thing I want to do is put EVERYTHING onto the new one that I have on the existing one as I am happy to just dump it all onto an external drive to access as/when needed.

Any advice much appreciated

Thanks

You can connect the two imac with an ethernet cable to transfer files between them with the share option..

 

[agrayphoto]

Yes you can use iCloud. It's what I did a couple months ago.

 

[PokerGuy]

You can connect the two imac with an ethernet cable to transfer files between them with the share option..

Thanks
[doublepost=1515185042][/doublepost]

Yes you can use iCloud. It's what I did a couple months ago.

Thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

You can -try- to set it up with "as little as possible".

But no matter.
In time, what's on it will "grow on you", anyway!

 

[briloronmacrumo]

In my experience it's less time-consuming to transfer everything and prune later once the new machine is running. Pruning before the transfer to a new machine risks things not working while pruning after the transfer makes it easy to test if all the non-pruned stuff still works as desired.

My process begins with a cloned( i.e. SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner etc. ) external drive ( SSD in my case but not required ) of the old machine. Attach the cloned drive to the new machine and when the OS starts first time it will ask about transferring data/files from another machine or drive. Just point it at the external drive. Good luck.

 

[cambookpro]

In my experience it's less time-consuming to transfer everything and prune later once the new machine is running. Pruning before the transfer to a new machine risks things not working while pruning after the transfer makes it easy to test if all the non-pruned stuff still works as desired.

My process begins with a cloned( i.e. SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner etc. ) external drive ( SSD in my case but not required ) of the old machine. Attach the cloned drive to the new machine and when the OS starts first time it will ask about transferring data/files from another machine or drive. Just point it at the external drive. Good luck.

I think whilst this is generally prudent advice, once every 5 years or so it might be beneficial to do a 'pre-prune', as after years of software accumulation it can be hard to know what you need to find and delete. I still had remnants of apps I hadn't used since Mac OS 9 in Library folders when I last did a completely fresh install. Ended up freeing 25GB or so by only manually transferring the files and apps I needed.