Migration from 2012 iMac to 2013 iMac

If your Time Machine disk has a USB 3 interface, that will be just as fast as a Thunderbolt connection to the old Mac.

Chris Blount said:

My Time Machine backup is on my Time Capsule.

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In that case, read OS X: How to migrate data from another Mac using Mavericks - it talks about Thunderbolt as an option.

Very interesting. I just bought a new Mac Mini and used Migration Assistant to copy settings from my 2007 iMac clone on a FW800 disk (again I had about 500GB of data); of course TB was not a choice for me. The whole process took just a little over 2 1/2 hours, so the TB approach wasn't considerably faster in this case. If the source and destination were SSDs instead then TB would of course be much faster, but the limiting factor here is the hard drive speed.

You did quite well. While TM is convenient it is also very slow as you noticed. I also keep a TM backup on my Time Capsule but it is so slow that I never use it. To me TM is good for archiving old revisions of files but a clone is much better as a backup. Eventually I may try TB after prices come down some more.

Transitions can take a while. It took me 1 week to completely upgrade my iMac from Lion to Maverick and be back to 100% usability.

Chris Blount said:

Really? You must have a lot going on. After I migrate or upgrade, It usually takes me maybe about an hour to enter any passwords, re-configure a few things and run a new backup.

This is my 4th iMac (my first was purchased back in 2007) and I've never had any huge issues or spent days transitioning especially when I run the migration wizard.

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Yeah for real. Here was my upgrade path (simplified):

-Back up and archive files
-Install Mavericks on an external hard drive
-Boot from external hard drive
-Wipe iMac's internal hard drive
-Clean install Mavericks on the iMac
-Run Software Update to update OS X
-Install additional software
-Update installed software
-Repair permissions
-Restore from Time Machine
-Clear out preferences in user library
-Repair permissions
-Restart
-Run a Time Machine backup
-Restart

The tasks that took the longest were: archiving/backing up because I was looking through files and folders between the internal and external hard drives, downloading software updates over the internet, and restoring from Time Machine.

There are also the other OCDs that I have but didn't put down but this but it's how I take care of things.

Chris Blount said:

Wow! That's a lot of effort. That is one of the reasons why I moved to Apple so I wouldn't need to deal with that sort of stuff anymore. Back when I was using Windows, it would literally take me a week to move. Now it just takes me a few hours and I'm done.

I can understand why you do it that way but it seems a lot of uncessesary effort. Are you using your Mac for business?

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It is a lot of effort but keep in mind that it's not anything I do often. If you look at the big picture, 1 week out of the 2.5 years that I've owned my iMac isn't a whole lot of down time, especially since it was during the holiday season. The last time I did anything like this was when I upgraded from 10.6.8 to 10.7 while skipping 10.8.x all together, though I didn't put in as much effort then as I did this time around. I put in this much effort now because there was a lot that I wanted to clean out due to migrating info since 10.3.x, and back then OS X upgrades were every 2 or so years anyway. If anything, I'll probably skip all of this effort for 10.10 and do a standard upgrade, basically treat it like an iOS upgrade, then do some serious housekeeping for 10.11 or what ever Apple comes out with by then.

I know what you mean about having to do this kind of stuff with Windows, where you literally had to nuke the boot drive because of the amount of garbage that manages to hook itself deep into the system. I don't think any of this is necessary for most users unless they have been rolling information over from update to update like I have.

Aside from wanting to get a relatively fresh start with 10.9.x, it was a good opportunity to consolidate, archive, and backup important files, a project that I've been putting off since I bought my iMac. Because I did all of this, I was able to build a sound and strong digital workflow, or at least greatly improve on the workflow I developed for myself years ago.

As for using my Mac for business, yes, I do use it for work. Since I use it for work, I didn't do the upgrade as soon as Apple released Mavericks to the public because I didn't want to risk having apps break on me when I needed them. So I found the perfect time to do it during the holidays.

While we're on the subject of cleaning out a system that's used for work, I'm actually surprised with the amount of working professionals that heavily use a Mac for work and don't bother with a more thorough upgrade. I attribute it to two things: 1) the lack of knowledge and 2) they're not as neurotic as some of us. I snicker when they complain about "things not working properly" after an upgrade and it mostly due to the fact that they may not have cleaned something out or didn't bother repairing permissions.