I'm planning to upgrade my MBP this year or next year. I know that in a crisis, you would use whatever backup is available, but for just moving to a new mac, is one better than the other between restoring from TM vs. restoring from a clone?
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Time Machine vs. Cloning for moving to a new Mac
- Thread starter Mewthree
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BrianBaughn
macrumors G4
I've always been a clone fan but the new APFS disk formatting has put doubt in my mind. After a regretful upgrade from Mojave to Big Sur I decided to return to Mojave. I still had the original Mojave SSD, untouched, because for the upgrade I got a bigger SSD.
Cloning from the old SSD to the bigger one had issues (for one, Mail wouldn't open properly). Using Migration Assistant to a new install of Mojave from a clone of the original gave the same issue. Using Migration Assistant from the original SSD to a new install worked.
I didn't test Time Machine.
My issues with the clones could be due to some corruption in my User Account but, like I said, Migration Assistant from the original worked.
My migrating advice would be use Time Machine for your backup but…when you migrate to the new Mac…do it directly from the old Mac first.
If it's not too much trouble you'll probably get the best end result on your new Mac if you just start from scratch and reinstall everything.
Cloning from the old SSD to the bigger one had issues (for one, Mail wouldn't open properly). Using Migration Assistant to a new install of Mojave from a clone of the original gave the same issue. Using Migration Assistant from the original SSD to a new install worked.
I didn't test Time Machine.
My issues with the clones could be due to some corruption in my User Account but, like I said, Migration Assistant from the original worked.
My migrating advice would be use Time Machine for your backup but…when you migrate to the new Mac…do it directly from the old Mac first.
If it's not too much trouble you'll probably get the best end result on your new Mac if you just start from scratch and reinstall everything.
Apple_Robert
Contributor
When upgrading to a new Mac or new OS, I start clean and then manually move important files over that I need. That way, I am not running the risk of bringing something corrupt to the new Mac or new OS.
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theMarble
macrumors 65816
I've been using Time Machine and have tried cloning a drive using CCC; Time Machine has always been slicker, easier and for me faster than cloning is, especially on newer computers (eg: Mojave+) but I have had one bad experience with it when I had to erase my 2015 Pro's drive and reinstall High Sierra from Internet Recovery. It transferred my data back fine however it left strange remants of the old system files on the system, not sure if that is a bug or not. In 10.14 and later it has been good.
jparker402
macrumors 6502a
I don't understand what you mean by "restored from Time Machine every time I've upgraded". I have upgraded my 2015 MBA from whatever it first came with to just now when I upgraded from Catalina to Big Sur. As far as I know Time Machine was never involved at all, at least not manually by me. Was it somehow automatically involved? Should I somehow have done something different?
I think the question you need to ask yourself is why you'd specifically use a cloned drive. Cloned drives have historically made sense as bootable backups, in case of data loss, but they shouldn't be your first choice for migrating data. APFS volumes and metadata is far more complicated in Catalina and Big Sur than they were in Mojave and earlier HFS+ systems. I think people who recommend migrating from cloned drives have long done that and remember doing so when Mac OS X was much younger, and all you had to do was boot a computer with any cloned drive to get it to work. That doesn't happen any longer, and it certainly won't work if you were booting a cloned Intel Mac drive with an Apple Silicon Mac.
When you use Migration Assistant on two computers or use a Time Machine backup, you're guaranteeing that Apple's software is always responsible for selecting 1) the data to be backed up, and then 2) the data to be restored. When you ask the destination computer to read data from a cloned drive connected to your new computer (as opposed to the source drive, sitting in your old computer, with Migration Assistant running), you're asking the new computer to guess which data is appropriate to bring from the cloned drive. It's going to work 99% of the time, but there's no reason to introduce that small risk.
None of this is to say that Migration Assistant and Time Machine are perfect. They still have bugs in them, which cause them to fail to complete transfers or migrate incorrect data. But I believe for migrations, a cloned drive is the least good choice (even if all the choices are, in fact, good choices).
When you use Migration Assistant on two computers or use a Time Machine backup, you're guaranteeing that Apple's software is always responsible for selecting 1) the data to be backed up, and then 2) the data to be restored. When you ask the destination computer to read data from a cloned drive connected to your new computer (as opposed to the source drive, sitting in your old computer, with Migration Assistant running), you're asking the new computer to guess which data is appropriate to bring from the cloned drive. It's going to work 99% of the time, but there's no reason to introduce that small risk.
None of this is to say that Migration Assistant and Time Machine are perfect. They still have bugs in them, which cause them to fail to complete transfers or migrate incorrect data. But I believe for migrations, a cloned drive is the least good choice (even if all the choices are, in fact, good choices).
Sorry to cause confusion. I was talking about changing to new Mac hardware, not doing macOS upgrades.
jparker402
macrumors 6502a
i would avoid cloning or block copy restores and do a new install and transfer files over via time machine or individually