Pray for me: Gonna erase and start over this weekend!

[N9JIG]

I currently have a 2018 MacMini with Mojave but when I have bought new Macs over the years I always restored the new computer from the old one, usually via TimeMachine. This means I have a couple decades worth of chum, with old 32-bit applications, support files and the like. My 2TB SSD has 1.3TB of stuff on it, about half are pictures and videos. To show how long this has been going on, the User Name has "G5" as part of it.

My plan for this weekend is to erase and restore the SSD from scratch with Catalina. I am starting out by making 2 TimeMachine backups on separate drives. I will separately copy my media, files and some installers for applications that are not on the App Store as well as my Bookmarks for the browsers my WFH job uses. After Catalina is installed I will selectively restore some of the files (my Parallels image, some documents and pictures etc.)

I figure that I will retain the media files separately and as needed I can grab them but will also be getting a separate NAS drive for media storage so I don't fill up the internal SSD and I can share them among my various computers.

I figure after installing Catalina, Office, Adobe, FileMaker, Parallels and the others I will be around 300 or 400 GB, about half of what I have on there now, with plenty of room left.

I hope I will not have any real issues but I have set up my other computer for work in case of a catastrophe. With the TimeMachine backups I can easily restore to the prior config if needed but hopefully I will not have to bother with that.

 

[N9JIG]

All went well! It was actually easier than I thought even though my USB boot drive did not work. I could not boot from it even after following the T2 instructions retrieved from a couple different sources but I was able to erase and reformat the SSD with the restore partition and then installed Mojave from there. I then immediately upgraded to Catalina via the App Store and it went in just fine.

After that I plugged in my external HDD with my files and started to copy them over as I started to install my various applications. Most were downloaded (Office, Adobe CS, Parallels, FileMaker Pro, browsers etc.) but a couple were installed from files on the HDD.

I then imported my media (photos, music and videos) from the external drive and started going thru the applications and setting the product keys etc. Some of these tasks took a while sinc ethe external HDD is and older USB 2.0 one but it was not a problem as I had Netflix goin on the iPad while I was waiting and the file transfer from the HDD was started just before I went to bed and it was done by the time I got up.

All in all my 2TB SSD went from 1.3TB used to about 900 GB, so I saved almost half a TB of space by eliminating 20 years or so of chum and old applications. Over the long weekend I will go thru and delete old files that are no longer needed or useful (manuals to long gone devices, duplicates etc.).

All went a lot better than I thought, no panic ensued...

 

[AustinIllini]

My MacBook Air was my first which I didn't use time machine for. At this point, I think new is the way to go for most applications anymore. It's nice to when you only installl the Apps you need when you need them. Keeps things a bit cleaner.

 

[N9JIG]

I agree. These days that applications for the most part are downloaded instead of CD-installed and with online file storage the TimeMachine restores are less desirable for more advanced users.

TimeMachine is easy and efficient but it restores all the old stuff you don't need anymore as well. It just takes a little foresight like saving your media files, bookmarks and stuff you don't keep in your Documents Folder.

I have not had to go back and recover anything from my Mojave TimeMachine backups so far and I plan on keeping them for a while. I replaced the older USB-2 drives with a new USB-C drive with the recent install so there is no hurry in deleting them...