Migrating from one MacBook Pro to another

[Xeridionix]

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to replace my wife's early 2008 MacBook Pro soon as it has a few issues, one being the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT that I've had to reflow to get working properly again and an issue with the sensors causing it to randomly shut down (which led to me disconnecting the sensors to work around, but this has the side effect of the fans running at maximum speed constantly).

She's got it pretty much set up the way she wants it, and I'm likely to replace it with the entry level 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Retina). I'm wondering in the long run if it would be fine to just pull the hard disk out of her current MacBook and swap it with the one in the new MacBook (it's an HGST 1 TB drive that is nearly brand new) or if I would be better off restoring a Time Machine backup onto the new machine?

Thanks for any advice and help you can offer on this matter.

 

[hallux]

Can't you use Migration Assistant? There are several ways to accomplish that but I found MA to work VERY well.

 

[Xeridionix]

Can't you use Migration Assistant? There are several ways to accomplish that but I found MA to work VERY well.

Haha yeah sorry that's what I meant by using the Time Machine backup (I guess I should've been a little clearer there), I'd select the option in Migration Assistant on the first boot to move everything over. I've never actually used it before in the few years that I've been using OS X on and off, I've always just set everything up from scratch and copied data the old fashioned way... old Windows habits die hard I guess.

 

[hallux]

I used it when I upgraded to an SSD. Installed the OS, popped the old drive in an external enclosure and selected to copy everything over from the old drive. 2 hours later I had seemingly the same exact installation as I had on the old drive, except it was then on the SSD instead. Even saved logins and saved browser identities came right over, it was as if it was the same computer.

 

[Xeridionix]

Does Migration Assistant also transfer over applications as well, including stuff like Photoshop or Lightroom? Or would those need to be reinstalled again to work correctly... sorry if this sounds stupid, again just coming from a Windows world where everything basically needs to be reinstalled to work correctly haha.

 

[hallux]

Apps came right over. In fact, one of the options is to migrate JUST the apps.

 

[Xeridionix]

Awesome. Thanks for the help!