How Long Does It Take To Transfe Files From One Mac To Another Using Migration Assistant?

[ignatius345]

It isn't just a matter of "What's fastest" but also "what's most cost effective AND "Fast Enough"

Paying $50 for a Thunderbolt cable to use once, is not cost effective.

Buying an external hard drive that you can then continue to use for backup or data, is cost effective.

Thanks for your input, but I was specifically responding to the claim that "The fastest way to use migration assistant to move from and old Mac to new is to: create a CLONED backup of the old Mac..." which is untrue.

 

[cool11]

Thanks for your input, but I was specifically responding to the claim that "The fastest way to use migration assistant to move from and old Mac to new is to: create a CLONED backup of the old Mac..." which is untrue.

No, it is true.

All years, 2 decades now,
I migrate from my older mbp to the new one,
putting migration assistant, to take all data from a cloned disk made with 'superduper', an identical copy, to an external hard disk.
Migration assistant finds all the appropriate data there.
In a couple of hours, I have my older setup/personalized environment/files/apps etc from the older mac, to the new one.

 

[ignatius345]

No, it is true.

All years, 2 decades now,
I migrate from my older mbp to the new one,
putting migration assistant, to take all data from a cloned disk made with 'superduper', an identical copy, to an external hard disk.
Migration assistant finds all the appropriate data there.
In a couple of hours, I have my older setup/personalized environment/files/apps etc from the older mac, to the new one.

Yes, I'm very familiar with the process. I've done it many times myself exactly as you describe. It's a great method and highly recommended, and as I also wrote above, gives you an extra backup copy of your data.

Still not as fast as connecting Mac to Mac with a fast cable and running Migration Assistant that way.

 

[MacBH928]

Yes, I'm very familiar with the process. I've done it many times myself exactly as you describe. It's a great method and highly recommended, and as I also wrote above, gives you an extra backup copy of your data.

Still not as fast as connecting Mac to Mac with a fast cable and running Migration Assistant that way.

🥴

I never thought of connecting to devices together,
why would i want to import from external disk using CCC if Migration Assistant does that same?

I am willing MA wil migrate preferences (date format, icon size, etc etc) which I doubt CCC will

 

[ignatius345]

🥴

I never thought of connecting to devices together,
why would i want to import from external disk using CCC if Migration Assistant does that same?

You're going to want to use Migration Assistant no matter what, if you want your new Mac to have everything the old one had. Cloning your old drive using CCC and then cloning that onto the new one, like we did on older Macs, doesn't really work anymore AFAIK.

Anyway, using Migration Assistant it doesn't matter really whether the source is a CCC backup, a Time Machine backup, or a connection between Macs -- but the latter method is fastest if you can get a good connection speed.

I am willing MA wil migrate preferences (date format, icon size, etc etc) which I doubt CCC will

Yeah, all that will come through using Migration Assistant. In my experience, the new machine ends up pretty much exactly like the old one -- all the preferences, settings, etc. The only things you have to go through and set up again are things like Apple Pay and TouchID, and signing into iCloud again on the new Mac. There's gonna be some time where Spotlight rebuilds its indexes and other apps get reoriented with regard to syncing, but really it's a very seamless process.