Time Machine or Migration Assistant?

[curiousjo]

This is my first time moving data from a current laptop to a new one and I have a few newbie questions. And yes I did read the other like threads before posting:

1. I have ~1 TB of data that I need to move from current laptop (macOS 10.15.7) to my new one (Tahoe). Is it better to use Migration Assistant or Time Machine to do so, and, is there an advantage to one over the other? Should it matter, I hardly have anything on iCloud.

My original plan was to move things manually so that I can start fresh on the new laptop with a clean structure and cleaned up files. I’ve decided this is a crazy notion with that volume of data I’d be spending my life cleaning up. I’m looking for the least amount of headache and reliability. (From a systems perspective, while I’d love to get rid of whatever gunk my laptop has accumulated over the years that may be gumming up the works, I wouldn’t even know where to start to do that.) I had thought of having the Apple Store do the migration but would rather not for privacy reasons.


2. The only item that I may not want to transfer over is Apple Mail, as I might want to start Apple Mail net-new for a variety of reasons. If I transfer everything over except for Apple Mail and then decide I do want to move it to the new laptop, would I use Time Machine or Migration Assistant to do that? And what issues, if any, might I encounter if I migrate Apple Mail over on its own?

While my Time Machine back up should be good, in the off chance it’s not, I wouldn’t want to have to start migrating everything all over again. I’m not sure if Migration Assistant allows you to select one item to migrate without having to go through all of the users/admin settings?

Hope this makes sense. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Fishrrman]

BACK UP the old Mac.
You can use either an external hard drive or SSD, SSD is always faster.
If you already have a time machine backup, I guess you can use that...
HOWEVER...
If you haven't created the backup yet, DON'T USE TIME MACHINE.

Instead, download CarbonCopyCloner from here:

Download CCC - Bombich Software

bombich.com

CCC is FREE to download and use for 30 days.
Doing things "my way" will cost you NOTHING.

Use CCC to create a cloned backup of your old Mac.
When it's done, set it aside for the moment.

When the new laptop arrives, take it out of the box and set it on the table.
DO NOT open the lid yet.
CONNECT your backup drive.
NOW open the lid for the first time -- it should boot right up.

Begin setup.
Now you have an important decision to make.
No one here can make it for you...
...YOU have to decide.
Do you want to bring stuff over from the backup?
Or... start pretty much "fresh", leaving a lot of the old stuff "behind"?

IF you created a CLONED backup, it's EASY to find and access old files later on.
With time machine... I'll reckon "not so much".

Re the "mail issue".
Don't make things too hard here.
If you're going to bring your existing account over, I'm thinking it's going to bring your mail over, too.

I don't recall if setup assistant/migration assistant allows an account to be migrated WITHOUT bringing the mail account and settings over, as well. Can someone else help on this point?

I'm thinking that if you DON'T want mail brought over, you may have to create a new account. Not "a new mail account" -- a new USER account. I could be wrong.

Hmmm....
I'm wondering if you could use setup assistant to migrate other stuff and leave the "accounts" option UNchecked?

So you can see...
If you want to get "too particular" about what will be migrated, setup assistant/migration assistant may not be for you.

Be aware that doing a "manual migration" is more involved, can be tricky in some instances, and you have to prepare for it (on the old Mac).

This is why I STRONGLY SUGGEST that you create a CLONED backup of your old drive.
A cloned backup will mount right on the desktop (of the new Mac) like any other drive.
If you remember "where things were" on the old Mac, you'll know where they are on the cloned backup -- because they're "the same".
You can easily deal with permissions problems by using the "get info" box (for the cloned backup), and putting a check into "ignore ownership on this volume".
Now, anything you copy will "fall under the ownership" of your NEW account on the NEW Mac. If you DON'T do this... you could end up with permissions problems.

OK... rambled on long enough.
The EASY WAY is to just connect the backup and let setup assistant "migrate it all", and sort things out afterwards.

Again, it's "up to you"....

 

[!!!]

I'd recommend using MA, thunderbolt will be far faster than reading from your backup disk. There's no real reason to use your TM backup when your old Mac is still functioning fine and can be used as a source for MA.

 

[whitby]

There are three things to consider before proceeding:

1. Settings. Do you want to copy all your settings over or are you happy to set these up from scratch. This includes most but not necessarily all passwords, display options etc. if you install from scratch you will need to do this.
2. Do you have all the keys etc. to install your applications from scratch. Without them you have a real problem that no one can solve.
3. Is it just the data you want copied over.

You comment that you do not use iCloud, but do you have iCloud set up to keep passwords, Safari favorites etc but just do not use it for data. This is crucial as if you do keep passwords etc. in iCloud this makes things much much easier. Even the minimum free account stores this info. unless you explicitly stopped it. From what you say, you do not use Photos to store photographs in the cloud for example. I would advise you to make sure that even if you do not use iCloud for data (I don’t) you make sure it is set up to keep passwords and Safari info, and possibly your desktop.

As for mail (assuming we are talking about Apple Mail), if you sign in with the same accounts, your mail information is still there ( it is kept on the Mail server, not on your machine). If you want to abandon your old mail, you will need to create a new mail account and tell everyone about your new email address. If the email account is the same as your Apple ID, this gets complicated quickly as you will need a new Apple ID, in which case any info you had in the cloud (like passwords) would disappear as well if you link your new machine to the new id. It is possible to have more than one Apple ID, so you could use one for email and one for the machine iCloud, but not sure of the point of doing that.

My approach with a new machine is to set it up from scratch using my current Apple ID (to clean out the old crud in my old machine e.g. orphaned plist entries etc.) . This then, unless I explicitly prevented iCloud from storing my passwords and Safari favorites etc., brings over all my passwords and Safari favorites. Mail will automatically bring across the accounts and, if they are not your Apple ID, then just the names of the accounts and you will have to sign in again. If one of the accounts is your Apple ID, it will automatically be transfered and signed in with the credentials you provided at set up time for the new machine. You will then need to install all your none Apple default apps.

Now you can copy over the data. As suggested Carbon Copy Cloner is the fastest way to do it. Do not use Time Macine as it is painfully slow. You can do this by using an intermediate disk or over a WiFi and network connection.

Migration Assistant will clone your entire old machine onto to your new one, including name, passwords etc. It then expects you to reset the old one otherwise you are going to have to spend time changing names of the machines etc. so you can keep them separated. BTW WiFi is often faster than a direct connection for some reason. A direct cable seems to be inordinately slow which is counter intuitive.

Hope this helps.

Note that after using Migration Assistant you may still have to provide the passwords to sign in to some sites or apps for security reasons but Passwords should have the relevant credentials unless it is one of those apps that Passwords cannot handle (and there are some).

Apple generally expect you to have everything stored in iCloud e.g docs., photos, desktop etc. so migration is simply a matter of either using Migration Assistant (and resetting your old machine back to new) or settings up a new machine, signing in with your Apple ID and everything you had in iCloud will be there, requiring you only to install your none Apple apps and any other data not in iCloud.

Hope this helps. I have done this many many times, so your questions are very relevant.

 

[ChrisA]

Migration Assistant will move everything, including all those preference settings. It is the best method. But do make sure you have multiple backups of the data.

Don't try and do it manually because there are likely files you don't know about in places like ~/Library and such.

Do a final backup and then unplug the drive until you are 100% sure the transfer worked.

 

[curiousjo]

There are three things to consider before proceeding:

1. Settings. Do you want to copy all your settings over or are you happy to set these up from scratch. This includes most but not necessarily all passwords, display options etc. if you install from scratch you will need to do this.
2. Do you have all the keys etc. to install your applications from scratch. Without them you have a real problem that no one can solve.
3. Is it just the data you want copied over.

You comment that you do not use iCloud, but do you have iCloud set up to keep passwords, Safari favorites etc but just do not use it for data. This is crucial as if you do keep passwords etc. in iCloud this makes things much much easier. Even the minimum free account stores this info. unless you explicitly stopped it. From what you say, you do not use Photos to store photographs in the cloud for example. I would advise you to make sure that even if you do not use iCloud for data (I don’t) you make sure it is set up to keep passwords and Safari info, and possibly your desktop.

As for mail (assuming we are talking about Apple Mail), if you sign in with the same accounts, your mail information is still there ( it is kept on the Mail server, not on your machine). If you want to abandon your old mail, you will need to create a new mail account and tell everyone about your new email address. If the email account is the same as your Apple ID, this gets complicated quickly as you will need a new Apple ID, in which case any info you had in the cloud (like passwords) would disappear as well if you link your new machine to the new id. It is possible to have more than one Apple ID, so you could use one for email and one for the machine iCloud, but not sure of the point of doing that.

My approach with a new machine is to set it up from scratch using my current Apple ID (to clean out the old crud in my old machine e.g. orphaned plist entries etc.) . This then, unless I explicitly prevented iCloud from storing my passwords and Safari favorites etc., brings over all my passwords and Safari favorites. Mail will automatically bring across the accounts and, if they are not your Apple ID, then just the names of the accounts and you will have to sign in again. If one of the accounts is your Apple ID, it will automatically be transfered and signed in with the credentials you provided at set up time for the new machine. You will then need to install all your none Apple default apps.

Now you can copy over the data. As suggested Carbon Copy Cloner is the fastest way to do it. Do not use Time Macine as it is painfully slow. You can do this by using an intermediate disk or over a WiFi and network connection.

Migration Assistant will clone your entire old machine onto to your new one, including name, passwords etc. It then expects you to reset the old one otherwise you are going to have to spend time changing names of the machines etc. so you can keep them separated. BTW WiFi is often faster than a direct connection for some reason. A direct cable seems to be inordinately slow which is counter intuitive.

Hope this helps.

Note that after using Migration Assistant you may still have to provide the passwords to sign in to some sites or apps for security reasons but Passwords should have the relevant credentials unless it is one of those apps that Passwords cannot handle (and there are some).

Apple generally expect you to have everything stored in iCloud e.g docs., photos, desktop etc. so migration is simply a matter of either using Migration Assistant (and resetting your old machine back to new) or settings up a new machine, signing in with your Apple ID and everything you had in iCloud will be there, requiring you only to install your none Apple apps and any other data not in iCloud.

Hope this helps. I have done this many many times, so your questions are very relevant.

Thanks very much for sharing this information. Feeling a bit overwhelmed so I may have some more questions for you after this email exchange if that’s okay. Thanks for your patience with all of my questions and my complete inexperience doing this. To clarify a few things:

1. Goal: Move all data, settings, applications, browser favorites over so that the transition to using the new laptop is as quick and friction-free as possible.

2. Passwords: Apple Passwords is not an option with Catalina. For years I have used very old encrypted program to store passwords. So after transferring data from old to new laptop, I will need migrate to a password manager like Passwords, 1Password or Proton Pass. Given the age of the encrypted program, this will most likely be a manual process rather than a csv file transfer, but I digress.

3. Browsers: I almost exclusively use Firefox,and I have tons of bookmarks. I used to use Safari exclusively and do have favorites that I would want to transfer to the new laptop.

3. Applications: Great question about keys. Guess I will cross that bridge when I get to the transfer. They too are old versions so it remains to be seen if I will be able to use them with Tahoe without upgrading (Word, Excel, Omni Outliner, Text Edit, Mobiile Mouse, etc.). To answer your question, I do want to copy over the applications IN ADDITION to the data.

3. iCloud: With the except of just a few shared photos, I store 99% of my photos locally and back up to an external hard drive once a week. Your recommend "make sure it is set up to keep passwords and Safari info, and possibly your desktop”. How and where would I do that?

4. Mail: Yes I use Apple Mail. I’m moving from a home-hosted email server to a third-party email provider who allows use of personal domain email addresses. My current email sources, all of which I intend to keep, include: iCloud, self-hosted @ personal domain, and third party providers. I have thousands of emails on my current laptop that I’d love to have available on the new but it just might be too complicated to transfer it all. So Apple Mail migration may be a bit messy, which is why I thought I might start out NOT transferring Apple Mail and configuring things net-new on the new laptop. A friend will be helping me with the email set up () but he’s away until mid-July, so I can’t ask his preference about transferring or not, and I want to get cracking on configuring the new laptop. Do you know what would be the best migration option for moving Apple Mail over on its own and/pr if this is not advisable given this background information?

5. Transfer Method:
Thanks for letting me know that TM would be painfully slow. As suggested by another respondent, sounds like Carbon Copy Cloner (or SuperDuper) is the way to go. Not sure how one transfers the cloned copy to the new machine, but I assume that the directions are somewhere online? What are the benefits to use Carbon Copy Cloner versus Migration Assistant?

I do want to keep my current laptop intact and don’t want any changes to it, including not changing the machine name. You said that Migration Assistant "expects you to reset the old one otherwise you are going to have to spend time changing names of the machines etc. so you can keep them separated.” So are you saying if I use Migration Assistant, I would need to call the new laptop something else or does it force you to rename the old laptop?

As a complete newbie, I was going to use TM or MA but sounds like I should rethink that plan. I am not someone who likes to store stuff in the cloud. So my "user profile" may not fit the ease that Migration Assistant affords to an iCloud user.

Thanks so much for your help.

 

[curiousjo]

Migration Assistant will move everything, including all those preference settings. It is the best method. But do make sure you have multiple backups of the data.

Don't try and do it manually because there are likely files you don't know about in places like ~/Library and such.

Do a final backup and then unplug the drive until you are 100% sure the transfer worked.

 

[whitby]

Migration Assistant will move everything, including all those preference settings. It is the best method. But do make sure you have multiple backups of the data.

Don't try and do it manually because there are likely files you don't know about in places like ~/Library and such.

Do a final backup and then unplug the drive until you are 100% sure the transfer worked.

Agreed but it also brings over the clutter you may not need. However if this is not a concern then I completely agree.

I had sensed that the OP was concerned about the clutter and hence my suggestions. But for the simplest solution MA is easy and works well. Just make sure that you rename the new machine as it will have the same as the old one. It can take several hours.

For me I always want a clean fresh OS install and new installs of the apps. Library stuff you mention is really only used for app config and status data and rarely has user data. I have never hit issues with a clean install and a user data copy process.

Again, if you do not need or are not concerned about orphan info etc. then MA is an excellent solution.

 

[benwiggy]

Is it better to use Migration Assistant or Time Machine to do so

When the run Migration Assistant, it asks you if you want to migrate from another Mac, or a TM backup. There's not really any difference. (At least, that's my memory of it.)

As a complete newbie, I was going to use TM or MA but sounds like I should rethink that plan.

Definitely don't rethink it. Just let the Mac migrate your stuff, and then get on with using it.

Doing manual work or using third-party tools is unnecessary for most cases.

 

[curiousjo]

Thanks for your recommendation. I do have 1 Time Machine back up on an external drive, and am working on creating another on another external drive, which will take some time. Given others comments, I should do a copy of the drive using cloning software. Sorry, are you saying to do a final back up of the old or the new laptop?

 

[curiousjo]

BACK UP the old Mac.
You can use either an external hard drive or SSD, SSD is always faster.
If you already have a time machine backup, I guess you can use that...
HOWEVER...
If you haven't created the backup yet, DON'T USE TIME MACHINE.

Instead, download CarbonCopyCloner from here:

Download CCC - Bombich Software

bombich.com

CCC is FREE to download and use for 30 days.
Doing things "my way" will cost you NOTHING.

Use CCC to create a cloned backup of your old Mac.
When it's done, set it aside for the moment.

When the new laptop arrives, take it out of the box and set it on the table.
DO NOT open the lid yet.
CONNECT your backup drive.
NOW open the lid for the first time -- it should boot right up.

Begin setup.
Now you have an important decision to make.
No one here can make it for you...
...YOU have to decide.
Do you want to bring stuff over from the backup?
Or... start pretty much "fresh", leaving a lot of the old stuff "behind"?

IF you created a CLONED backup, it's EASY to find and access old files later on.
With time machine... I'll reckon "not so much".

Re the "mail issue".
Don't make things too hard here.
If you're going to bring your existing account over, I'm thinking it's going to bring your mail over, too.

I don't recall if setup assistant/migration assistant allows an account to be migrated WITHOUT bringing the mail account and settings over, as well. Can someone else help on this point?

I'm thinking that if you DON'T want mail brought over, you may have to create a new account. Not "a new mail account" -- a new USER account. I could be wrong.

Hmmm....
I'm wondering if you could use setup assistant to migrate other stuff and leave the "accounts" option UNchecked?

So you can see...
If you want to get "too particular" about what will be migrated, setup assistant/migration assistant may not be for you.

Be aware that doing a "manual migration" is more involved, can be tricky in some instances, and you have to prepare for it (on the old Mac).

This is why I STRONGLY SUGGEST that you create a CLONED backup of your old drive.
A cloned backup will mount right on the desktop (of the new Mac) like any other drive.
If you remember "where things were" on the old Mac, you'll know where they are on the cloned backup -- because they're "the same".
You can easily deal with permissions problems by using the "get info" box (for the cloned backup), and putting a check into "ignore ownership on this volume".
Now, anything you copy will "fall under the ownership" of your NEW account on the NEW Mac. If you DON'T do this... you could end up with permissions problems.

OK... rambled on long enough.
The EASY WAY is to just connect the backup and let setup assistant "migrate it all", and sort things out afterwards.

Again, it's "up to you"....

Thanks Fishrrman for your help. I am digesting it and may have some additional questions for you.