I agree with Brian. Cloning to the new drive and swapping is the way to go.
However, this will result in the new drive not having a recovery partition. That problem is easily solved though. Go the App store and download and install a fresh copy of El Capitan. During the install process, the installer will automatically create a recovery partition.
Wouldn't I lose all my data then and defeat the purpose cloning?
No. It will only re-install the operating system without changing any data.
[doublepost=1468024971][/doublepost]Is this article wrong?
"If you've had to replace it with a stock drive that has nothing on it—not even OS X—you won't be able to boot from the OS X Recovery Partition. But fear not, you can get the recovery rolling from the Time Machine backup disk itself: Just hold down the Option key when you start your Mac; you'll be able to select the Time Machine backup disk as your startup drive, and go from there."
http://www.imore.com/how-set-and-restore-time-machine-backup
Like CoastalOR mentioned, in previous OS X versions (starting with Lion 10.7.2) there was a recovery partition placed on the TM backup disk you could boot to, but El Capitan broke it.so if my time machine backup came from el capitan I can hold option down (select timemachine) and we will be good?
Or will I need access to disk utility to select restore from time machine backup?
Thanks guys,
So I had to use disk utility to format the new HD but luckily I had a bootable USB.
I then did restore from time machine and we are all good.
Couple questions:
1. When cloning - do you need to have higher storage on the cloned device? For example my original HD was 128 gigs.
My thumb drive was 64 gigs.
I was only cloning 40 gigs but I couldn't clone because it said destination not large enough.
2. My thumb drive is no longer bootable once I put a time machine backup on it.
Is this normal and how can I make it bootable again?
1.) Can I run CCC on my original machine (which is a MacBook Air) to clone the entire drive (including the recovery partition)? Then, restore that drive to the new SSD (having the new SSD connected to the original machine via USB adapter). I would then "simply" shut down, disconnect the SSD, and install it into the new Mac Mini.