Migration asst. onto small SSD on new Mini

[weaztek]

I'm making the switch to my first SSD drive (256GB). I plan to load the OS and apps on that drive along with projects I'm working on for the week (like photos in progress).

My hard drive is currently 1.15 TB wherein lies the problem. How should I do a successful migration which involves putting the system and apps on the SSD and the User files (music, photos, docs, etc.) onto an external? Surely this is a common issue.

 

[tromboneaholic]

Migration Assistant gives you 4 categories to choose from: 1 Applications, 2 User (Home), 3 Other Files and Folders, and 4 Settings.

It will also show you the size of each category.

You can select Applications along with Settings using Migration Assistant , and then manually copy your User Folder along with the Other Folders onto the external drive.

Here is a link that walks you through setting up your Home folder in a different location:
https://www.lifewire.com/move-macs-home-folder-new-location-2260157

You can manual manage where you have your working files. Just remember that your defaults Documents folder will now be on your external drive in your Home folder, so you will want to create a Working folder on the SSD.

 

[weaztek]

Thanks for that info. So to summarize I might follow this sequence...
1) Migration Asst. choose apps, and settings. Once complete the new Mac Mini will be a working system without user files.
2) Create a home folder on my ext. drive using the lifewire instructions you posted.
3) Create an admin user account on the startup SSD drive. How?
4) Safely copy User folder onto the ext. drive. I'm guess this is not accomplished by drag and drop. Tips?
5) Create a small folder (say on desktop titled 'Work in Progress') on the SSD for my working files. How?

 

[tromboneaholic]

1. yes
2. yes (after step 3).
3. The admin account will be created the first time you log into the new machine.
4. Home folder can be safely copied using drag and drop.
5. Actually, the Desktop files will be in your Home folder on the external drive, you'll want to create the Working folder on the SSD (Macintosh HD). Once you've created the Working folder on the SSD, you can create an alias for it and put it on your desktop.

 

[weaztek]

Ok, I'm migrated over to the new Mini (256GB SSD) and an ext. HDD. Although the home folder can be added to an ext. drive (as you noted) I decided to keep it on my startup disk.

I brought over Applications, Other Files, and Settings (to the SSD) and they take up ~69GB which I was pleasantly surprised. That gives me ~187GB to have a few working files and a safe buffer chunk of memory.

Applications did not migrate the first time over so I ran a second migration which was successful.

Geekbench 3 scores are: 4415 single, 20993 multi.

The biggest hiccups I'm having are that my finder window size/position is not remembered and my ext. HDD can fall asleep and basically lag out the entire system. I know I could set it to never go to sleep, but that seems a bit extreme to me.

 

[tromboneaholic]

The biggest hiccups I'm having are that my finder window size/position is not remembered and my ext. HDD can fall asleep and basically lag out the entire system. I know I could set it to never go to sleep, but that seems a bit extreme to me.

I set my drives to not sleep for this reason. If you put the computer to sleep, the drives will sleep then.

As far as the window settings, I'm not sure if this will help (but it won't hurt):
Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac - Apple Supporthttps://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063