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Moving to solid state and hard drive

D

deltrotter

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 30, 2004
175
0
Hi guys

Will be buying a new imac soon (hopefully a new model next week) and was going to get one with a solid state and hard drive in it. My current 2008 imac has hard drive.

How easy is it to transfer over the applications to the solid state and my data (ie. itunes library, documents etc) on to the hard drive part?

Is it a case of reinstall the apps on the solid state, or will the Apple transfer process do the split for me.

TIA

Cheers

Del
 
deltrotter said:
Hi guys

Will be buying a new imac soon (hopefully a new model next week) and was going to get one with a solid state and hard drive in it. My current 2008 imac has hard drive.

How easy is it to transfer over the applications to the solid state and my data (ie. itunes library, documents etc) on to the hard drive part?

Is it a case of reinstall the apps on the solid state, or will the Apple transfer process do the split for me.

TIA

Cheers

Del
Click to expand...

Del,

Leave all the applications on the SSD and use the HDD for document storage. If you access some documents frequently then you should plan on storing them on the SSD for the best performance.
 
Thanks for that.

Will the Apple transfer utility do that for me (ie. offer me the option) or will I have to manually install the apps again and copy over the documents etc.

Cheers

Del
 
For my MAS and other apps, I'm just going to redownload, since I don't want to deal with updating them right after installing them.

For my iTunes media (about 600GB worth), I'm moving it all to an external HDD before I get my new iMac per the instructions here.

Then I'll connect it to the new computer, open up itunes, then move it to the internal HDD. Bada bing, bada boom.
 
I'm on the same train of thought as deltrotter, but I'm less worried about the transfer process, and more worried about picking the right drives.

Can I buy my own SSD and have my local Apple licensed retailer install it to avoid the markup without voiding applecare?

Perhaps I'm better off paying for the overpriced BTO SSD, and then buying the document storage HDD seperately?

I'm assuming that there will only be room for one internal HDD or SSD in the new iMac. If that's the case, is there a resource I can use to figure out the best bang for my buck in an external HDD? ie. balance between cost, capacity, and data transfer rates? I see that that transfer speed is one of the benefits of USB3, but perhaps paying more for a thunderbolt-connected drive is worthwhile?
 
Ok, I have everything backed up on a external using time machine. Was hoping I could just restore from that and put the apps on the solid state and everything else on the hard drive.

Cheers

Del
 
deltrotter said:
Ok, I have everything backed up on a external using time machine. Was hoping I could just restore from that and put the apps on the solid state and everything else on the hard drive.

Cheers

Del
Click to expand...

You can do a clean install of the OS, then use Migration Assistant to move apps, etc. If you are relocating the User folder, pay attention to which boxes are selected for what comes over. You can choose to relocate the entire Home folder on the extra drive, which is fairly easy, or the folders holding larger files, using symlinks ( a bit trickier but keeps some system stuff on the SSD). Here are some tutorial links....

http://hardwrk.com/en/manual/migration/

http://www.tuaw.com/2012/01/20/ask-tuaw-how-do-i-setup-a-mac-with-both-an-ssd-and-a-regular-hd/

http://www.macworld.com/article/1164891/keeping_mac_os_and_data_on_separate_drives.html
 
Many thanks for that.

It doesn't look easy! Maybe I should spend a day reinstalling the apps that I usually use (and giving me a chance to get rid of stuff I don't use) on to the SSD and then copy my data on to my hard drive.

Ie. Starting afresh!

Cheers

Del
 
deltrotter said:
Many thanks for that.

It doesn't look easy! Maybe I should spend a day reinstalling the apps that I usually use (and giving me a chance to get rid of stuff I don't use) on to the SSD and then copy my data on to my hard drive.

Ie. Starting afresh!

Cheers

Del
Click to expand...

A fresh reinstall is always a good chance to clean house. I'm doing the same on two computers as we speak, having done dual drive set ups on both.

I used Migration Asst for apps, since it takes all the licensing stuff with it and I don't have my Adobe disks with me.

You can do this manual houseclean, but I think you still might want to first set up the user folder on the second drive, I don't think its that hard and its the cleanest way for the computer to see your second drive for this data without you manually pointing everything to it, and maybe missing something.

Setting up the moved user folder should not be that hard.
 
deltrotter said:
Thanks for that.

Will the Apple transfer utility do that for me (ie. offer me the option) or will I have to manually install the apps again and copy over the documents etc.

Cheers

Del
Click to expand...

If you use Setup Assistant it will migrate everything to one drive (by default the SSD), from there simply move your documents file to the HD.
 
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