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Upgrade from 2020 27” iMac to Mac Studio.
- Thread starter cmcbhi
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You'd use a Thunderbolt 3 cable, but yes you can use the Migration Assistant.
A clean install is probably for the best though. You just skip the migration step when you turn on your Studio, and then install/copy what you need. It isn't hard.
A clean install is probably for the best though. You just skip the migration step when you turn on your Studio, and then install/copy what you need. It isn't hard.
You need to use a TB3 for target disk mode specifically. You can use ethernet for rsync or whatever.
Transfer files between two Mac computers using target disk mode
You can connect an Intel-based Mac to another Mac using a USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt cable, then transfer files.
support.apple.com
I made the same upgrade and connected the two through an Ethernet cable. Didn’t take long to transfer. I’ve used TM backups in the past to transfer.
Btw, the speed difference is incrediable between the 2020 iMac and the M4 Max Mac Studio.
Btw, the speed difference is incrediable between the 2020 iMac and the M4 Max Mac Studio.
None. I was a little concerned but everything worked. Even third party apps I had transitioned over without me having to get new versions
If I read correctly, isn’t it mandatory to do a clean install from an Intel Mac to M silicon?
With the speeds of the M series, I’m sure downloading a few apps and transferring data shouldn’t take that much time.
With the speeds of the M series, I’m sure downloading a few apps and transferring data shouldn’t take that much time.
I'm having difficulty installing Adobe Creative Cloud on the Studio. Message says that I have to install Rosetta to open Creative cloud on an Apple Silicon Mac. Difficulty/cannot download Creative Cloud from the Adobe site. Any words of wisdom?
It is not "mandatory", in the sense that a migration will still be through, and it will try to pass along all apps and user data.
The resulting apps if they are Apple's 1st party ones, I believe they will automatically be turned into the Apple Silicon ones since they are inside the OS installer, or pre-installed on a new Mac, or it will download once you log in Apple ID.
Then the 3rd party apps or discontinued Apple apps, the Intel one is copied over from your old machine, which of course needs Rosetta 2 to run. This is the part that people will see the most incompatibility. And very often an Apple Silicon version of apps already exists, but Apple's migration won't do that for you, you need to download / install them manually yourself.
The user data even including app settings will be carried over, usually no issues.
So the concept of starting fresh across macOS versions, even including between Intel and Apple Silicon, has more to do with how clean you want the new install to be, vs how much time you are willing to sit through the process. Starting fresh can ironically mean less time spent, since downloading an app will usually give you the latest Apple Silicon version anyway, whereas migration like said above, you need to manually go through what was done and what is left on Intel binary.
Thank you for being thorough. For ages now I’m a stickler for clean installs. I even do it on my iOS devices, usually once or twice a year I wipe my device and install fresh.
That is also my current plan with my new studio. I just opened it last night and plan to download the full 15.4 sequoia file through usb and clean install macOS instead of just booting the factory device and updating. Generally speaking, factory windows devices usually have bloatware. I haven’t purchased a new Mac in almost ten years… is there anything considered bloatware on a brand new Mac boot?
There is no need to download and re-install if your intention is to avoid bloat, the versions are the same. Matter of fact the one pre-installed may contain even less bloat, since the web version is meant for all machines, so it probably has more drivers etc that the pre-installed instance likely only contains the files that Mac Studio needs.
But it is handy and a best practice to keep a bootable USB macOS installer handy, in case you need to restore the Mac or something more serious.
I maintain a small business and for the dozen or so Macs here, I use an NVMe SSD that contains APFS volumes that are Time Machine targets for every single Mac, and then keep a separate partition that is a bootable macOS Ventura installer (we are still on Ventura, on purpose). This way I only need to plug and mount this NVMe SSD to a Mac that needs restore, actually even for a new Mac that needs migration. I usually would run through the macOS setup, create a new admin account, so the machine is "fresh". The apps are downloaded and installed from App Store + 3rd party source fresh also. And then, I migrate *only* the user account contents from the TM backups after the above, the process will create user accounts even using the exact same user names, after restoration their user settings remains, almost as if booting from the old Mac. The only thing that needs to be re-done are security-locked stuff.
May I ask, what do you do for work? Your use case sounds like how I treat my windows machines. I have a Win10Pro home server, SSD boot drive and then SSD data drive. All data is stored on the D drive. And that drive is duplicated to two T7 Shields. If windows goes down, the D drive is untouched and I have two backups anyway.
Now my iMac 27 inch is different. Since that’s a Fusion Drive, ALL data is on the one drive. Since I can’t dual hard drive the studio, my plan for the Mac is still the same. Keep ALL data on the main drive and just clone that drive to externals as a backup. I would much prefer to treat my Mac’s like I do windows, though it seems everything is all about external drives today, which is something I’m not used to at all, only for backups, not for primary external data drives. My Mac use case is primary photo editing and photo library storage.
And on that note, where the hell are TB5 enclosures? TB5 has been out for almost a year.
It's a music related publishing business, so, not producing the audio itself but everything else, mostly graphics.
Yes I left out the important bit, most of the Macs do not contain data, they all connect to a main NAS with a 20G backbone, and them some other servers that are remoted into etc. So the backup and restore only takes care of macOS user account, which is mostly just user settings, logins, some temporary project files people left on the Mac not wanting to pollute the company server etc. We do have like, few MBPs that are deployed with active project files on internal drive, being taken outside premise a lot; the user needs to discipline himself in how to regulate dropping and updating files to and from server, since we don't complicate things by using sync software for instance.
For my personal photos which are already like a few TBs since I shoot DSLR, I used to put the primary RAWs on a HDD then moved on to NVMe SSD enclosures, using TM to backup. After a while I just switch to deploy a NAS at home anyway, the NVMe SSD is still used as an active project drive but not the primary location anymore. The key to using NAS for this purpose is how the backup is automated, with lots of built-in software dealing with it and other file serving related things. With long term data management strategy, sooner or later people should consider moving on from Mac internal storage and even external DAS, IMO.