Restoring new mac to backup of my old mac

[tigress666]

Ok, another question. My current mac's hard drive is full at 256 GBs (I just freed 20 gbs so it now has 25 GBs left on it). I want to upgrade to a new Mac (to tell the truth my mom is gifting me one) but I can't afford the one that has the bigger hard drive (or rather I can afford to pay a little extra on top of what she does but the choice is hard drive or RAM and I really do tend to use up a lot of RAM when I use my computer so I'm thinking RAM is more important as I can get an external for some of the stuff I have stored on my mac).

I just realized the new mac will have some software on it my old mac does not have. And some of it I want to keep (Pages mostly honestly).

So,
1. if I try to restore it to my old mac's image, will I simply not have enough room?
2. If I try to restore it to my old mac's image, will it erase all the new software (and will I have access to get that software back if it does?).

 

[simon48]

It depends on how you transfer the data and what size the new HD is (obviously I can tell you if you'll have free space if you don't say how big it is).

Also on a side note, you should anyways keep 20% of your HD free. Having less then 20% free can (sometimes very significantly) slowdown your computer.

 

[ColdCase]

You can use migration assistant to migrate the stuff from the old machine (or the old machine's time machine's backup) to the new computer. Migration assistant will tell you if you have enough room or not, it doesn't erase anything. If you are short hard drive space, you can pick and chose the files/folders/libraries to transfer from the old machine to new.

My daughter just went through this. She chose to migrate everything except her iPhoto library for now. She'll make more room on the disk and migrate the photo collection later.

 

[tigress666]

It depends on how you transfer the data and what size the new HD is (obviously I can tell you if you'll have free space if you don't say how big it is).

Sorry, I kinda did but I did it in a way that wasn't so clear. THe new one would have the same size hard drive (256 GBs).

And I've wondered if not having much hard drive free might affect how my computer runs or not. My problem is that the options that would let me get a new hard drive I really don't like (either upgrade to a computer that I don't see as much of an upgrade but since it's the cheaper version of the MBP it comes with more hard drive or replace my hard drive but if I open my computer up I can't get myself to do so without also replacing the RAM and the battery and that ends up adding up to so much it's as much as the computer is worth and i can't get myself to either compromise on not upgrading something or paying as much as the computer is worth to upgrade what it needs. Plus last time i upgraded my computer I ended up talking myself into a new computer<- my current one, anyways).

Or TLDR: My problem is I don't want to compromise on things in order to get more RAM/hard drive but I can't afford just a new mac that has more hard drive than my current one.

 

[simon48]

Sorry, I kinda did but I did it in a way that wasn't so clear. THe new one would have the same size hard drive (256 GBs).

And I've wondered if not having much hard drive free might affect how my computer runs or not. My problem is that the options that would let me get a new hard drive I really don't like (either upgrade to a computer that I don't see as much of an upgrade but since it's the cheaper version of the MBP it comes with more hard drive or replace my hard drive but if I open my computer up I can't get myself to do so without also replacing the RAM and the battery and that ends up adding up to so much it's as much as the computer is worth and i can't get myself to either compromise on not upgrading something or paying as much as the computer is worth to upgrade what it needs. Plus last time i upgraded my computer I ended up talking myself into a new computer<- my current one, anyways).

Or TLDR: My problem is I don't want to compromise on things in order to get more RAM/hard drive but I can't afford just a new mac that has more hard drive than my current one.

It sounds like 256GB isn't enough for you. People storage use doesn't usually go down either and you're redlining it right now. I'd find a model that you like that has more storage (maybe save up for it?) or get an external drive to store some data, but I don't recommend having data that isn't backed up.

 

[tigress666]

It sounds like 256GB isn't enough for you. People storage use doesn't usually go down either and you're redlining it right now. I'd find a model that you like that has more storage (maybe save up for it?) or get an external drive to store some data, but I don't recommend having data that isn't backed up.

I know it isn't enough. My compromise was going to be using a 500 gb I have that's not being used and taking off some files I don't need to be on the computer at all times (there's actually a lot of those, I believe a lot of my data usage is my pictures/movies/sounds file collection throughout the years but I could be wrong) and putting it on that (I already have a backup hard drive for everything that is not even close to full but I want to keep it dedicated as my timeline backup only) and I'd try to have at least one backup with everything on my computer on it before I moved some stuff to the other hard drive).

I mean it would be nice to have everything just on my computer. But I do admit a lot of stuff is stuff I've more collected and don't really use that much at all but don't want to get rid of either.

 

[simon48]

I know it isn't enough. My compromise was going to be using a 500 gb I have that's not being used and taking off some files I don't need to be on the computer at all times (there's actually a lot of those, I believe a lot of my data usage is my pictures/movies/sounds file collection throughout the years but I could be wrong) and putting it on that (I already have a backup hard drive for everything that is not even close to full but I want to keep it dedicated as my timeline backup only) and I'd try to have at least one backup with everything on my computer on it before I moved some stuff to the other hard drive).

I mean it would be nice to have everything just on my computer. But I do admit a lot of stuff is stuff I've more collected and don't really use that much at all but don't want to get rid of either.

I would be very careful using a system like that, it seems a little bit risky that you might not have a backup for something on your external. Using a NAS box or having Time Machine backup your external as well as your computer might be good idea.

Also for figuring out what's using up all your space I highly recommend DaisyDisk, the free version will work just fine for what you're doing.

 

[Fishrrman]

[[ My compromise was going to be using a 500 gb I have that's not being used and taking off some files I don't need to be on the computer at all times (there's actually a lot of those, I believe a lot of my data usage is my pictures/movies/sounds file collection throughout the years but I could be wrong) ]]

You can't fill a drive "all the way up" without problems. There's going to be a "speed hit" and you'll start getting "out of drive space" alerts. Your internal drive needs about 20% free space for "breathing room".

If you have a lot of old movies, pics, etc. -- best to move the less-frequently-accessed files to another (external) drive.

Actually, you should copy EVERYTHING to the larger external drive, to have as a backup.

This is easy to do and anyone can do it with the proper software.

I suggest CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.

Either will create a bootable "clone" of your internal drive on the external. It will boot and run and look exactly like the internal drive does now, and everything will be there.

I know that CCC is free to download, and free to use for 30 days.
I believe SD is also free to download, and will continue to make "full clones" without having to pay the registration fee. You do have to register SD to do "incremental" clones, however.