Has anyone tried installing on a new Volume on the same disk and used Migration Assistant?

[zorinlynx]

I'm about to try this... Creating a new APFS volume group called "Ventura HD" and installing to it, with the idea being to migrate from my Monterey installation directly from the same disk rather than upgrade the original installation. This would allow me to easily go back if there's serious problems, rather than having to do a full restore from backup.

My main two questions are:

- Does this work?
- Does Migration Assistant do an efficient APFS copy from the old volume to the new, so your data doesn't take up space twice?

I figure Apple would be smart enough to do it that way, but you never know. I figure maybe someone's done this before and has a story to tell. If not, when I do it I'll be telling the stories.

 

[haralds]

That type of AFPS meta link only works on the same volume.
Migration works volume to volume in the same container if you have enough space.

 

[zorinlynx]

That type of AFPS meta link only works on the same volume.
Migration works volume to volume in the same container if you have enough space.

Ahh, this makes sense. I guess I'll have to trim down a bit in order to do this.

That said, I tried to do it earlier today. The installer hung up on "Closing all applications and restarting" and I had to restart manually, and the install didn't finish. I decided to put this off for a bit as obviously there's still issues.

 

[haralds]

I have only tried installing Monterey on another volume after upgrading to Ventura. Worked on three machines - M1 and Intel.

 

[WilliApple]

I did make a separate volume, but instead of using Migration Assistant, I backed up all my files in iCloud and used Alias since you can use apps on a different volume.

 

[gilby101]

Does Migration Assistant do an efficient APFS copy from the old volume to the new, so your data doesn't take up space twice?

I have not tried it, but I am sure answer is no. Create yet another volume and move most of your data there. Just retain small ~/Documents etc on both Monterey and Ventura with aliases pointing to common folders on the 'data' volume.