Switching Mac Minis, what I need to backup & how to restore on new system?

[rvs007]

A week ago I bought a refurbished late-2012 Mac Mini dual-core i5. The Mac has been up and running for the last few days. On Friday, I managed to find a refurbished late-2012 quad-core i7 for a bit more money. I decided to get the i7 and return the i5.

I'm new to the Mac environment. I do have Time Machine hooked up to the system and it's running. What are the steps I need to take to move my current configuration to the new quad-i7. Assuming the Time Machine has the entire HDD backed up on the i5 (how do I check?), do I simply plug that into the i7 and it will automatically detect I want to restore the backup?

 

[satcomer]

If you have both Mac connect them together with the fastest port cable you can use to connect both. Then on the new launch /Applications/Utilities/Migration Assistant.app and transfer everything you want except Network settings. Do those manually

Now if you have a Time Machine disk gave it connected when you first power up and it will ask you to bring in data from the Time Machine backup.

 

[rvs007]

Yes, I will have a few days before I have to return the old one, so I guess that's the way to go? I guess it doesn't matter if the new one will be running Maverick, while the old one has been upgraded to Yosemite?

 

[satcomer]

Yes, I will have a few days before I have to return the old one, so I guess that's the way to go? I guess it doesn't matter if the new one will be running Maverick, while the old one has been upgraded to Yosemite?

Then just transfer document, pictures, email & music. There are check boxes in Migration Assistant that you can choose.