Fastest way to transfer data between 2012 MBP and 2018 MBP

[Ideanj]

Hi everyone,

I may be over thinking this, but what is the fastest method to manually transfer data from a mid-2012 MBP to the 2018 MBP? I'm trying to figure out what cables/adapters I need and I can't come to a conclusion of what I should actually get.

Any help would be appreciated

 

[tcador]

How much data do you have? I did this earlier this week from my 2011 mbp to 2018 using migration assistant. Don’t recall exactly how long it took but it was fairy quick for roughly 220GB, using just WiFi and airdrop for one off files (i setup new versus restoring all files / account).

 

[treekram]

If you want to use "Target Disk Mode", using a USB-C to USB-A cable would be the most economical method.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201462
(If you do this, make sure the cable is USB 3.0 on the USB-A connector side, there are cables which are only USB 2.0 on the USB-A connector side.)

This article is very recent (July 13, 2018), so hopefully it takes into account the new MBP. You can also use Thunderbolt, but if you don't already have the cable and adapter, it'll be $80, and you get maybe 2x the speed of the USB cable. The USB-C to USB-A should be about 500MB/sec (raw speed, what you get in target disk mode may not be this fast).

(If you're not familiar with Target Disk Mode, basically the 2012 MBP would appear as an external disk on the 2018 MBP. )

 

[CodeJoy]

I've used rsync over Wifi to migrate data. It's a little tricker to use than some other options, but in return offers very detailed control. If this is just a one time transfer for data migration, I would just use network transfer and let it sit over night if you really have to. Or USB as indicated in other comments.

Technically, TB2 to TB3 would offer the fastest data transfer speeds.

 

[Ifti]

You could create a Time Machine backup to external disk - or a SuperDuper clone.
Connect the external drive to your new machine and us emigration assistant to restore.

 

[treekram]

I should have thought of this before - to the OP, do you have a HDD or SSD in the 2012 MBP? If it's an SSD, do you have RAID0? (If you've never heard of that before, you likely don't have it as one has to take steps to configure it.) If you have a HDD, a wired Ethernet connection is just a bit slower than what the HDD can put out (if it's a slow HDD, the HDD may be slower). If you have a SSD, Target Disk Mode using USB will have somewhat comparable speeds to the SSD but Thunderbolt will likely not give you any performance advantage over USB. If you have SSD's with RAID0, you may get a bit better performance with Thunderbolt, but it likely won't be worth the extra cost.

 

[Fishrrman]

My suggestion:

You'll need a USB external drive. USB3 is best (fastest)
You'll need CarbonCopyCloner, which you can download and use FREE for 30 days:
http://www.bombich.com/download.html

Use CCC to clone the contents of the 2012 MBP to the external drive

Then, connect the external drive to the 2018 MBP.

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:
Do you actually have the 2018 MBP yet?
Have you gone through the initial setup already?
Or... are you still waiting to get it?

It's important because it will determine what you have to do next.
Provide the answer, and we'll continue...

 

[UnexpectedHuman]

I went with target disk mode, using Thunderbolt.

However, if you do this you may need to add the external disk to the Spotlight exclusion list. I found the new macbook trying to re-index the driver, which ground the transfers (and anything touching a local disk) to a halt. When done, you can reenable Spotlight on the older computer directly.

 

[Dovahkiing]

I wouldn't mess around with target disk mode to be honest.

The new 2018 MBPs have the internal drives soldered to the main board and all data encrypted by the new T2 chip by default and on top of that Apple removed the data recovery access port that was previously on these machines.

All together, that means you absolutely should be backing up your new 2018 MBP's data regularly. Hence, you should buy an external drive if you don't already have one. And, to bring it back to your original question, if you have a fast external drive, just do the data transfer with Time Machine.

 

[Jorg1312]

Actually I have the same question.

If I restore my time machine backup from the 2012 MBP to the 2018, will it run ok?

Haven’t bought the 2018 yet. Still undecided which processor is best.

 

[UnexpectedHuman]

I wouldn't mess around with target disk mode to be honest.

Yes, you absolutely need backups (we have a MacMini running as a server for this, amongst other tasks).

However, I refuse to use migration assistant and transfer all files manually. While you can do this from the time machine backup, the wireless connection makes moving 1/2TB of files very slow, and you do not want any failures while copying that leave doubts that something has been lost/corrupted.

I had two problems which may or may not have been resolved with migration assistant. Firstly, my non-retina external monitor (Asus PB278) output was crap with the new MacBookPro. It turns out that this is because macOS *still* wants to treat it as some kind of antique NTSC(ish) TV set. To fix this I needed to hack the kernel display overrides (see https://gist.github.com/ejdyksen/8302862 - which still works albeit with the need to temporarily disable SIP via booting to recovery mode and using csrutil enable/disable).

The second was the complete failure of the printer system, with Apple claiming (incorrectly) that they have no drivers. The solution to that was to google the driver installer package on Apple's own web site...

 

[treekram]

Actually I have the same question.

If I restore my time machine backup from the 2012 MBP to the 2018, will it run ok?

Haven’t bought the 2018 yet. Still undecided which processor is best.

You SHOULD NOT do a complete Time Machine restore from the 2012 MBP to the 2018 MBP. Currently, the 2018 MBP has a special version of High Sierra and if your MBP actually allows a full restore (it might complain and not do it), you'll have problems. You can use Migration Assistant to migrate files (but Migration Assistant makes the choice of what it can copy). If you control over what to migrate, then you should either copy those files to an external disk or use Target Disk Mode to selectively copy the files. I'm not sure what post #9 is saying. As long as Apple has properly coded the special High Sierra version of the 2018 MBP to work properly with Target Disk Mode (a big if, admittedly), then your 2012 MBP will appear as external disk on your 2018 MBP.

 

[Ideanj]

How much data do you have? I did this earlier this week from my 2011 mbp to 2018 using migration assistant. Don’t recall exactly how long it took but it was fairy quick for roughly 220GB, using just WiFi and airdrop for one off files (i setup new versus restoring all files / account).

I'm looking at transferring around 500GB of data manually as I don't want to transfer over the entire machine. I'll be picking and choosing files. To this point I've been using airdrop but for larger files it can take a while. I'll be getting a USB-A to USB-C cable today to hopefully try target disk mode instead.

If you want to use "Target Disk Mode", using a USB-C to USB-A cable would be the most economical method.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201462
(If you do this, make sure the cable is USB 3.0 on the USB-A connector side, there are cables which are only USB 2.0 on the USB-A connector side.)

This article is very recent (July 13, 2018), so hopefully it takes into account the new MBP. You can also use Thunderbolt, but if you don't already have the cable and adapter, it'll be $80, and you get maybe 2x the speed of the USB cable. The USB-C to USB-A should be about 500MB/sec (raw speed, what you get in target disk mode may not be this fast).

(If you're not familiar with Target Disk Mode, basically the 2012 MBP would appear as an external disk on the 2018 MBP. )

I believe I'll be using this method (USB-C to USB-A) as I don't want to clone the entire machine, just set up the new machine similar to the old one and manually transfer files over to eliminate 6 years of clutter. Thank you for the advice.

You could create a Time Machine backup to external disk - or a SuperDuper clone.
Connect the external drive to your new machine and us emigration assistant to restore.

In order to eliminate 6 years of clutter and unnecessary files from years of OS upgrades/app installs, I decided to not use Time Machine or clone the drive. thank you for the advice though

I should have thought of this before - to the OP, do you have a HDD or SSD in the 2012 MBP? If it's an SSD, do you have RAID0? (If you've never heard of that before, you likely don't have it as one has to take steps to configure it.) If you have a HDD, a wired Ethernet connection is just a bit slower than what the HDD can put out (if it's a slow HDD, the HDD may be slower). If you have a SSD, Target Disk Mode using USB will have somewhat comparable speeds to the SSD but Thunderbolt will likely not give you any performance advantage over USB. If you have SSD's with RAID0, you may get a bit better performance with Thunderbolt, but it likely won't be worth the extra cost.

I upgraded the 2012 MBP to 16GB ram and a 1TB SSD. I'm not sure about the RAID0 though, as I did the switch a while back. If I had to guess i would say no. I'll most likely be doing target disk mode using a USB-A to USB-C cable in order to drag over whatever files I need. Thank you for the advice

My suggestion:

You'll need a USB external drive. USB3 is best (fastest)
You'll need CarbonCopyCloner, which you can download and use FREE for 30 days:
http://www.bombich.com/download.html

Use CCC to clone the contents of the 2012 MBP to the external drive

Then, connect the external drive to the 2018 MBP.

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:
Do you actually have the 2018 MBP yet?
Have you gone through the initial setup already?
Or... are you still waiting to get it?

It's important because it will determine what you have to do next.
Provide the answer, and we'll continue...

I received the 2018 MBP yesterday and proceeded to set it up as a new device, while manually reinstalling all of the applications from the 2012 MBP. I decided not to clone the drive as theres YEARS of clutter and I'd rather have the 2018 device begin with a fresh start. Thank you for the advice

I went with target disk mode, using Thunderbolt.

However, if you do this you may need to add the external disk to the Spotlight exclusion list. I found the new macbook trying to re-index the driver, which ground the transfers (and anything touching a local disk) to a halt. When done, you can reenable Spotlight on the older computer directly.

I couldn't figure out the Thunderbolt situation from a 2012 MBP to a 2018 MBP so I settled on a USB-C to USB-A cable to hopefully get target disk mode running on the 2012 MBP. THANK YOU for the advice of excluding the drive from spotlight, that would've driven me absolutely bonkers.

---
I'll be trying the transfer with the new cable later this afternoon. If I run into any issues or frustrations I'll let you all know. Thanks for all the help!!!

 

[Fishrrman]

If you want to "pick and choose" files and folders from your old drive, I suggest this:

1. Again, use CarbonCopyCloner to clone the contents of the old Mac to an external drive.
2. The cloned backup is an exact copy of the internal drive and it's FINDER-MOUNTABLE, so...
3. Connect it to the new Mac and let it mount on the desktop.

BUT -- BEFORE you do anything else:
1. Click ONE TIME on the drive icon to select it
2. Type "command-i" (eye) to bring up the get info box.
3. At the bottom of the get info window, click the lock and enter your [new] password
4. In "sharing and permissions", put a checkmark into the box "ignore ownership on this volume"
5. Close get info.

NOW -- you can copy anything you wish from the external drive to the new Mac, and anything you copy will "come under the ownership" of your new account.

 

[Jorg1312]

You SHOULD NOT do a complete Time Machine restore from the 2012 MBP to the 2018 MBP. Currently, the 2018 MBP has a special version of High Sierra and if your MBP actually allows a full restore (it might complain and not do it), you'll have problems. You can use Migration Assistant to migrate files (but Migration Assistant makes the choice of what it can copy). If you control over what to migrate, then you should either copy those files to an external disk or use Target Disk Mode to selectively copy the files. I'm not sure what post #9 is saying. As long as Apple has properly coded the special High Sierra version of the 2018 MBP to work properly with Target Disk Mode (a big if, admittedly), then your 2012 MBP will appear as external disk on your 2018 MBP.

Oh no, so I have to install all apps and plugins again? Was hoping to avoid that.

 

[RobbieTT]

I used migration assistant from a TM backup. No dramas and no fuss going from a 2009 MBP (running HS a la DosDude) to a 2018 MBP.

I did tidy-up all the files and apps on the old MBP first; effectively setting up the old machine the way I wanted the new.

 

[Ideanj]

If you want to "pick and choose" files and folders from your old drive, I suggest this:

1. Again, use CarbonCopyCloner to clone the contents of the old Mac to an external drive.
2. The cloned backup is an exact copy of the internal drive and it's FINDER-MOUNTABLE, so...
3. Connect it to the new Mac and let it mount on the desktop.

BUT -- BEFORE you do anything else:
1. Click ONE TIME on the drive icon to select it
2. Type "command-i" (eye) to bring up the get info box.
3. At the bottom of the get info window, click the lock and enter your [new] password
4. In "sharing and permissions", put a checkmark into the box "ignore ownership on this volume"
5. Close get info.

NOW -- you can copy anything you wish from the external drive to the new Mac, and anything you copy will "come under the ownership" of your new account.

That's actually a great way to do it. Thank you so much for the advice, I appreciate the help and guidance!

 

[Ifti]

In order to eliminate 6 years of clutter and unnecessary files from years of OS upgrades/app installs, I decided to not use Time Machine or clone the drive. thank you for the advice though

With either a TM backup or a SuperDuper clone to external drive you can still pick and choose what you wish to restore or copy across to the new system - its the same as setting the machine to target disk mode, but without having to purchase a cable to connect the two system physically.

 

[Jorg1312]

I used migration assistant from a TM backup. No dramas and no fuss going from a 2009 MBP (running HS a la DosDude) to a 2018 MBP.

I did tidy-up all the files and apps on the old MBP first; effectively setting up the old machine the way I wanted the new.

Is the migration assistant the same as restoring a system from a TM backup?

 

[treekram]

Oh no, so I have to install all apps and plugins again? Was hoping to avoid that.

If you use Migration Assistant, it will copy over 3rd-party apps if it believes they are compatible with High Sierra. As for plugins, check and if, for example, it doesn't migrate plug-ins for Firefox, you should see what migration facilities it has (there's a "Sync" option in Firefox).

 

[matthewadams]

Trying to migrate my 2013 to 2018 has been the worst experience so far.
For some reason Target Disk Mode over TB was the slowest (just about 4mb/s?? despite trying different cables, according to Google not that uncommon).
Tried Ethernet which was a solid 50mb/s but ultimately failed over night transferring only half of everything.

I ended up setting up everything from scratch (also thinking after 5 years or more on the same OS, this might have been long overdue). Sure, it takes more time but I got fed up messing around with Migration Assistant.

 

[Weaselboy]

Is the migration assistant the same as restoring a system from a TM backup?

No it is not. MA keeps leaves the factory OS on the new machine and just imports your apps, data, and settings. A restore essentially clones the backup drive to the new Mac, OS and all.

Thing is a restore will not work on these new 2018s at the moment, since they are using a special build of 10.13.6 specific to the new MacBooks. So the macOS version you have on your old Mac and the related TM backup will not work.

 

[Jorg1312]

No it is not. MA keeps leaves the factory OS on the new machine and just imports your apps, data, and settings. A restore essentially clones the backup drive to the new Mac, OS and all.

Thing is a restore will not work on these new 2018s at the moment, since they are using a special build of 10.13.6 specific to the new MacBooks. So the macOS version you have on your old Mac and the related TM backup will not work.

Thanks. I think I’ll just start from scratch with a new install. Will probably take me a week to get everything going