Cloning and then clearing my MacBook Pro (Mojave)?

[Internaut]

Hi,

Back in 2016, thinking the the cloud is very much the future, I made the mistake of buying a MacBook Pro (2015 13") with 128GB SSD. Surprisingly, that is only just starting to bite me, with just over 20GB free and not a lot of options other than a big reset. Would this be a good strategy:

1. Create a bootable USB clone disk of my MacBook as it is (very belt and braces - the stuff I need should all be in iCloud/on external hard disk).
2. Boot with Opt/R wipe the disk using disk utility and then do a clean install of Mojave (presumably from the same recovery mode, if the same as previous experience).
3. Once that is up and running, then either upgrade to Catalina or wait for Big Sur.
4. Going forward, keep it lean (and next time buy one with a bigger SSD).

Does the strategy seem sound. Any gotchas? Does the fact I have Firevault Enabled cause any problems?

 

[glenthompson]

Another option would be to buy a larger SSD for it. The swap is not very difficult. A 480gb drive is only $140 from OWC. A little more if you want the tools and case to use your old SSD. I just bought a used 2015 Air with only 128gb and will be adding a 1tb drive, ordered and expecting it on Monday.

 

[Audit13]

I don't recommend OWC drives are they are expensive NVMe drives with an Apple connector.

I recommend getting a Sintech adapter and a NVMe drive. This is a cheaper option and the NVMe drive can easily be re-purposed in the future. An OWC drive can only be re-used in another MacBook.

 

[Internaut]

Well, I got my job as Senior Systems Test Engineer after I broke they crayon they gave me to write my name with at the interview... However, I’ve Googled it and it looks doable with my model. We have a couple of reasonable/reputable Mac Repair shops near the University. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Hi,

Back in 2016, thinking the the cloud is very much the future, I made the mistake of buying a MacBook Pro (2015 13") with 128GB SSD. Surprisingly, that is only just starting to bite me, with just over 20GB free and not a lot of options other than a big reset. Would this be a good strategy:

1. Create a bootable USB clone disk of my MacBook as it is (very belt and braces - the stuff I need should all be in iCloud/on external hard disk).
2. Boot with Opt/R wipe the disk using disk utility and then do a clean install of Mojave (presumably from the same recovery mode, if the same as previous experience).
3. Once that is up and running, then either upgrade to Catalina or wait for Big Sur.
4. Going forward, keep it lean (and next time buy one with a bigger SSD).

Does the strategy seem sound. Any gotchas? Does the fact I have Firevault Enabled cause any problems?

I have a Late 2012 Retina model that also has a 128GB SSD. It was never intended to be my primary Mac and I too haven't been as encumbered by the limitation as I'd ordinarily expect.

That said, what I would do is go to OWC and buy whatever SSD they have for your MacBook Pro. They will have the option of just the drive or the drive with an external enclosure for the outgoing SSD. I strongly recommend the latter option as it will make moving data to the new drive relatively painless. If your MacBook Pro is the Early 2015 13" model, then your Mac model identifier is MacBookPro12,1. The drive swap is pretty easy (you ought to only need a #00 Philips, a TR6/Torx 6 screwdriver for disconnecting the battery, and the Pentalobe screwdriver to even get in to begin with. All of those things as well as detailed visual instructions on how to do the swap are on iFixit's website.

As for how you set up the new drive? I'm always a fan of clean installations (in which case, I'd just wait for Big Sur to launch as the Public Beta already seems smoother than Catalina has ever seemed and comparably so to Mojave). I'd copy the data back manually and then reinstall everything.

Then again, if you have a bootable Mojave installer drive, you may just want to reinstall Mojave and run the migration assistant to have the Mac with the new drive look and function exactly like the old one, albeit with more storage.

I'm not a big fan of Migration Assistant (or restoring from Time Machine Backups, for that matter) unless I'm (a) migrating data from the exact same machine (i.e the only difference is the drive I'm moving to and from; I'm otherwise using the same computer) and (b) migrating from a drive running the exact same OS as is installed on the drive I'm migrating to (i.e. migrating from a drive running 10.14.6 to a new installation of 10.14.6). I find that going from one Mac to another and/or one macOS release to another is too messy for my liking.

I will be doing such a drive swap on my Late 2012 Retina 13", but primarily because I'm about to lend it to my stepfather who has an ailing 2011 Mac mini (that Apple won't be supporting with security patches past Big Sur's launch) and is waiting for the Apple Silicon successor to either the 2018 Mac mini or the just announced 2020 27" iMac.

 

[hwojtek]

Same procedure: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-macbook-pro-ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"Any gotchas?"

I'd stick with Mojave for a while.
So... I'd just re-install Mojave on the "wiped off" drive.
When you go through the initial setup, migrate over from your cloned backup.

 

[Internaut]

So, I have a very fresh MacBook and a bootable pen drive. Cloning an APFS drive to a bootable pen is a bit more involved than some online sources might suggest (there's a lot of out of date or incomplete information out there). So Google setting up external disk as APFS if you've not done this before. Also, probably best to avoid the clone via the disk utility - it comes up with an inversion error. There are work arounds but I felt nothing like confident enough in my understanding of the Macs filesystem to attempt these insufficiently informed. I used Carbon Copy.

The bootable pen drive almost didn't happen - I audited my files and they're all in iCloud. The only thing that gave me pause there is "What if I find a stray Aperture library?"

A 2013 MacBook Pro, refreshed and with the latest security update (plus the Logitech unifying software I had to download to get my external keyboard working) shows as having 106GB available of 121.12GB. So the OS overhead at least starts out pretty reasonable.

My next choice to make is whether or not to upgrade to Catalina while the MacBook is in a pristine state. At the moment, the MacBook is off my critical path so it's something of a plaything.

 

[Codeline]

I need to change mine also

 

[Internaut]

Bumpety bump. I did upgrade to Catalina before adding any further software. The only software I've added is:

• iWork (will give this a try)
• Capture One Pro 20 (photos will be stored externally)
• Lightroom CC (trying to get it to do all it's none cloudy stuff with an external USB SSD - seems to be working so far).
• Photoshop.
• Trello.
• Chrome.

I've no intention of installing Office 365 or anything MSFT (accept, possibly, Teams and Skype). I may install a couple of other photo related packages: Olympus Workspace and Fujifilm Raw Studio.

As I've been working on photos, I've observed the remaining disk space hovers around the 77-80GB level, so it's not stealing disk space (yet). I probably need to subtract 10GB from the displayed figure given macOS was throwing a fit when space dipped below 10GB. Upgrade the hard disk? Possibly. Even with a Workspace located externally, I'm not about to install JDK and Eclipse. More SSD space would certainly leave me more comfortable about that sort of thing.

Then again (me being me), I'm super excited to see where Mac goes with Apple's own silicon, so save pennies in case I want to buy something new, shiny and pricey.