2011-2015 Migration Issues

[Nellie17]

I just purchased a refurbished MacBook Pro late 2015 and I'm trying to transfer files from my older Macbook 2011 machine. The newer macbook uses High Sierra, while my 2011 is stuck at Sierra. Anyway, I used the migration assistant to transfer files overnight and all went well. The files transfered but the preferences were all gone so I'm wanted to avoid having to reset all that for all the applications. I tried to re-Migrate direcctly from Time Machine (via port, not wifi) but get the message that there is not enough room on the disk of the new computer. Sure enough, About this Mac shows that the new computer's disk is taken up by 400+ GB for the "System" and so migration fails. I made a new admin user on the new machine and deleted the user file from the original migration, but it did not free up the disk space. There is an option in Migration to "replace" the user but that is grayed out. Any help appreciated! Thanks!

 

[treekram]

One option you have is to completely erase the 2015 MBP, restore from your 2011 MBP Time Machine backup and then upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra (or Mojave, if you want). There's no guarantee that whatever settings issue you had won't still be there because it's difficult to know what the issue was by what you've described. The following will take some time and it will write a lot of data to the SSD but it's pretty straightforward as compared to trying to figure out exactly why the settings didn't transfer.

It's important that you check to make sure that what you want to restore will fit on the SSD in the MBP. From what you've described, that seems to be the case since the original migration was OK, but just make sure.

The steps would be:
1) Download the High Sierra installer. See step 4 in the link below - you need a working App Store app.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208969
Copy the installer (it will be in the Applications folder) to an external disk.

2) Go into Recovery, run Disk Utility and format (erase) the disk to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Make sure to select the disk and not the volume. The disk will have the manufacturer name and or model (should be an Apple unless the SSD has been replaced). If you don't see this, press Command-2. The size of the SSD will appear in a box towards the top right of the Disk Utility app - make sure that this reflects what the proper SSD size is. Make sure the "Scheme" is "GUID Partition Map".
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

3) Once the disk is erased, exit Disk Utility and then select "Restore From Time Machine Backup"

4) Check to make sure Sierra works the way you want it to. If the settings issue is still there, it may related to the hardware upgrade, not the OS upgrade.

5) Run the installer app you copied in step 1. It can be run from the external disk. Check to see if everything is running OK.

6) There were security updates after the last High Sierra version that will need to be applied via an App Store update (or you can download and run the update). This step isn't needed if you upgrade to Mojave.

 

[Nellie17]

Thanks for that great informative response. I actually started this very process you outlined above, just prior to reading your post, so I'm so glad to know I was on the right track. It occurred to me that some issues might be caused by having Sierra on the old machine and High Sierra on the new, so, as you say, I am assuming that the time Maching restore will convert the new machine to Sierra and I can upgrade after that. I think I will upgrade to Mojave. Thanks again!