Migrating From 1 TB drive to 480 GB SSD. Your thoughts?

[Christopher11]

My MB Pro 2012 no longer works adequately for my Logic Pro needs, and is generally too slow for me these days. I plan to buy a Mac Pro like this one and migrate. The seller can install El Capitan for me, same OS that I use currently, so I can migrate my apps and hit the ground running. It comes with plenty of storage; I don't mind at all if much of my data is not on the boot drive, but my MacBook has a 1 TB drive, and the SSD boot drive in this machine is only 480 GB. Is it still possible for me to transfer my user profile with essential apps like Logic Pro X and VSTs / plug ins, to the smaller SSD drive?

Thank you for any reply.

 

[monyker]

Hi Christopher,

One quick way to gauge whether you will run into a capacity problem:

On your MB Pro 2012, go to the Apple menu and click About This Mac. Click the Storage tab. This will show your disk storage usage by category. You can use this information to estimate the storage required by your apps and data.

You may discover that you will need to reserve your planned SSD storage for system, applications, and active projects/data, and archive completed projects/data to external storage or cloud. I think best practice is to leave a certain amount of free space (perhaps 10%-20%, or 48-96 GB of a 480 GB SSD?). I wasn't able to find "official" Apple guidelines/best practices for recommended amount of free space. Using (almost) all of the capacity of an internal drive may reduce system performance and will definitely be annoying if you frequently create/save new projects and have insufficient free storage.

When you're ready to migrate, see Migration Assistant in Applications > Utilities.

Hope that's helpful!

 

[Christopher11]

That's great advice, thank you. The benefits of an SSD are so great... I should definitely plan to get a machine with SSD big enough that I can boot from it and run my apps, correct?

 

[monyker]

I certainly recommend doing so. I personally wouldn't consider using a machine with a spinning-rust primary disk as my daily driver. For secondary storage, backups, etc., sure. But as you said, benefits of SSD are significant. If budget is a concern, I personally prefer a ~500 GB SSD for primary disk, even if I have to think through project/data archive strategy to keep sufficient free storage, than a 1TB or larger platter drive. I'm too impatient to deal with long boot and read/write times. 😀

 

[Christopher11]

Ah! So better to have a smaller sized SSD? I had not known that. Very interesting. That’s good to know, thank you.

I should be able to migrate my essentials apps and profile to half the size? I would certainly try.

 

[Fishrrman]

Why not just put a 1tb SATA SSD into the new MP to become your main drive?
SATA SSD's are cheap these days...

 

[Christopher11]

That's a good idea. I guess it's just easier if the one I buy from Ebay is already configured that way. But I could certainly install it. My MacBook feels really slow these days. Even if I cleared half the hard drive and reinstalled apps, I have a sense it's just not able to handle the processing demands I put on it. My projects in Logic Pro X can get intensive, with more than 100 tracks, convolution reverb, Kontakt which demands quite a lot, etc. I need a more powerful machine.

Do you think this will likely do the trick for me? It's not a 6 or 12 core. Thank you for any replies.

 

[Fishrrman]

Assuming you have not yet bought a replacement computer...

... have you given any consideration to a 2018 Mac Mini from the Apple Refurbished store?

 

[Christopher11]

I’m sure it’s an excellent machine. I have a sense I will get more storage and connectivity for my buck with a Mac Pro, hopefully one that burns through my processing needs.

 

[Christopher11]

Something like this one.

 

[Fishrrman]

You ought to check geekbench and other benchmarks for the 2018 Mini vis-a-vis a 10-year-old MacPro before you go discounting the Mini...

 

[Christopher11]

Thank you. I wanted to ask you guys about Geekbench scores for single versus multiple cores. This machine 3.33 Ghz Hex 6 core with 512 GB SSD and 64 GB of Ram, gets a single core score on Geekbench of 573, but multi core score of 2148. Does Logic Pro X support multi core processing?