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Fazzl

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 13, 2007
580
4
Hi everyone. I'm picking up an M1 MBA tomorrow. I saw this post about restores not working. Am I still able to transfer data from my existing MBP or do I have to setup as new and manually transfer individual files over? Thanks.

 
Don’t people keep everything on the cloud at this point? I never restore laptops. Just sign in and sync. I do keep a local copy of most things on my laptop, but never exclusively local. I don’t understand what needs to be transferred?
 
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Hi everyone. I'm picking up an M1 MBA tomorrow. I saw this post about restores not working. Am I still able to transfer data from my existing MBP or do I have to setup as new and manually transfer individual files over? Thanks.

Migration Assistant works fine. The posters tried to use Internet Recovery, which is no longer supported on M1 Macs.
 
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Don’t people keep everything on the cloud at this point? I never restore laptops. Just sign in and sync. I do keep a local copy of most things on my laptop, but never exclusively local. I don’t understand what needs to be transferred?
Clearly not everyone is like you - lots of people do keep things exclusively on their laptop. For those people, the stuff they keep locally needs to be transferred.

For example, I do not keep copies of my taxes or any of my financial records or info in the cloud. No need for Google or Box or whoever to be able to have access to that.

Also, it seems like the stuff in the Library folder should be transferred.
 
Don’t people keep everything on the cloud at this point? I never restore laptops. Just sign in and sync. I do keep a local copy of most things on my laptop, but never exclusively local. I don’t understand what needs to be transferred?
No to blow your mind but some of us even host our own clouds locally on our own networks! :p
 
Got my Mini earlier today, did a partial transfer (applications, libraries and a selection of files) with Migration Assistant. Put my MBP16 in target mode, and connected both Macs with a thunderbolt cable. Was relatively painless.
 
Got my M1 MBA in the mail today. I ran the Migration Assistant to transfer all data from my old MBA (2018), without a hitch... All went well without any problems.
 
Don’t people keep everything on the cloud at this point? I never restore laptops. Just sign in and sync. I do keep a local copy of most things on my laptop, but never exclusively local. I don’t understand what needs to be transferred?
I always do set up as new on all device purchases. Not only is critical data in cloud, I don’t want to migrate junk to my new device. Especially library folders which are full of files from apps I’ve tried.

It has always bothered me that when the method to uninstall is to drag app to trash there are usually scores of config files left behind in library. Many people are different and some don’t mind filling up drive space with applications and files that are never used.
 
OCD and computers rarely mix well. I remember having to talk people through moving their applications back to the “Applications” folder :) It just didn’t make sense to them that a “game” application should be sitting RIGHT THERE next to video editing and productivtity!
 
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I'm picking up my M1 MBA today, replacing a 2019 MBA. I was planning on doing a migration, but like the idea of setting up as new, installing the software I need, and just transferring over my music, photos, documents, etc. Is there anything I'm missing as to why I might want to consider a full migration?
 
Don’t people keep everything on the cloud at this point? I never restore laptops. Just sign in and sync. I do keep a local copy of most things on my laptop, but never exclusively local. I don’t understand what needs to be transferred?
You must have very little stuff.
 
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