How to backup current MacBook Pro for *eventual* Migration to New

[NJRonbo]

I plan to buy the new MacBook Pro being announced in October.

However, I have to trade in my current MacBook Pro NOW in order to get the best trade-in price.

So....

I need to back up my current MacBook Pro to an external hard drive.

I need to do it in a way that when I get my new 2016 MacBook Pro that I can do a MIGRATION off of that external hard drive.

I can use something like SuperDuper! which basically clones your hard drive to an external.

I am just not certain that MIGRATION on the new MacBook Pro will port over everything from a SuperDuper copied external drive.

Would appreciate advice. Thanks.

 

[Epic Xbox Revie]

Why not use Time Machine and migration assistant?

 

[NJRonbo]

Why not use Time Machine and migration assistant?

Never used Time Machine before. Always thought it just backed up several days worth of files.

So, you are suggesting backing up everything to Time Machine to an external drive and the Migration Assistant on the new MacBook Pro will port everything over?

Thanks for the help

 

[maflynn]

So, you are suggesting backing up everything to Time Machine to an external drive and the Migration Assistant on the new MacBook Pro will port everything over?

That will work,

Also Carbon Copy Cloner is an excellent tool as well

 

[hallux]

My understanding of CCC and SupDuper! is that they make an exact bootable copy of your drive. When I installed my SSD in my MBP, I used an external enclosure to house my old drive and used Migration Assistant to migrate from an "existing Mac" and pointed to that drive. It worked pretty much flawlessly.

 

[chabig]

I am just not certain that MIGRATION on the new MacBook Pro will port over everything from a SuperDuper copied external drive.

It certainly does. Don't worry. The clone is an exact replica of your main volume. Everything migrates perfectly from it.

 

[rick3000]

I would make at least 2 clones for redundancy, and have a TM backup. You could either clone your old MBP to your new one, but that may require a third computer (not sure if you can do it from the recovery partition) with the clone and new MBP booted in Target Disk Mode, or you could restore from the TM backup.

Boot from the clone(s) once you make it to confirm that is actually a bootable backup. The last thing you want is to find out there is an error after you have sold your previous computer.

 

[jerryk]

With all of the new feature rumored to be in the new MacBook Pro I assume it will require Sierra. How do you move the applications and data and not the OS files. Does Time Machine handle this?

 

[Fishrrman]

This is easy.

Use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create and maintain a bootable cloned backup of your internal drive.

It will look EXACTLY as does your internal drive now, and be "mountable" in the finder.

When you get a new MacBook, just connect the cloned backup at the moment that the setup assistant asks if you want to migrate from another computer or drive.

This works beautifully, and I believe it works more quickly than trying to migrate from a Time Machine backup.

 

[Weaselboy]

With all of the new feature rumored to be in the new MacBook Pro I assume it will require Sierra. How do you move the applications and data and not the OS files. Does Time Machine handle this?

Migration Assistant (using a Time Machine or cloned disk as the source) does that for you.

 

[snaky69]

Never used Time Machine before. Always thought it just backed up several days worth of files.

A quick google search would've told you that was not the case.

It does a full backup the first time around, then incremental backups from then on. IIRC hourly backups of the last 24 hours, daily of the last week, and monthly from there I think.

I used that along with migration assistant last time I switched computers, worked perfectly.

 

[NJRonbo]

Thanks for the help, all.

I am going to use SuperDuper to clone my drive to an external and then use Migration.

I was always afraid that doing this would also port over specific machine settings -- and I don't want to do that since this will be going to an entirely new MacBook.