Using Migration Assistance

[hfg]

It might be quicker to migrate your data from the external hard disk rather than from the TimeMachine backup of that disk (Time Machine migrations seem to take forever). In that case, you would answer "from another Mac", and then point it to your external drive.

 

[gelie]

It might be quicker to migrate your data from the external hard disk rather than from the TimeMachine backup of that disk (Time Machine migrations seem to take forever). In that case, you would answer "from another Mac", and then point it to your external drive.

Thanks does it matter that i used TM to back up to the external drive?

 

[hfg]

Thanks does it matter that i used TM to back up to the external drive?

Not if the TM backup was a relatively fresh one. If your TM has been backing up for a long time, it probably has a lot of "junk" which Migration Assistant will have to wade through to find the still-active data ... and that makes it really slow. If your external drive has everything you want to transfer, I think it will be the cleanest and quickest MA transfer to your new iMac.

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks Weaselboy. Two questions:
1) why is this considered a better method that just hooking up my old iMac to the new one and run MA?
2) is it better to do a clean install? If so how do i achieve that?

1. Either will work, but transferring over USB3 from the TM backup will be faster.

2. If you are not having problems with your current install, there is little to be gained by a clean install. A clean install involves manually creating a new account then manually installing all your old apps then after that manually moving over all the data. It can be a lot of work and get you in trouble if you don't know exactly what you are doing for little or no benefit.

 

[hfg]

1. Either will work, but transferring over USB3 from the TM backup will be faster.

I may have misunderstood the OP ... I thought gelie had his old system already cloned on an external USB3 drive, and also had made a TM backup of that drive to another USB3 drive. If his data is actually on the disk internal to the old iMac, then of course restoring from the USB3 TM disk will probably be faster due to the available transfer interface. Sorry if I mislead gelie ...

 

[Weaselboy]

I may have misunderstood the OP ... I thought gelie had his old system already cloned on an external USB3 drive, and also had made a TM backup of that drive to another USB3 drive. If his data is actually on the disk internal to the old iMac, then of course restoring from the USB3 TM disk will probably be faster due to the available transfer interface. Sorry if I mislead gelie ...

If gelie mentioned that I did not see it... I just skimmed the thread and did not notice it coming up, but i may have missed it.

 

[gelie]

If gelie mentioned that I did not see it... I just skimmed the thread and did not notice it coming up, but i may have missed it.

Thanks all. I used TM via external USB3 drive. Everything transferred perfectly(except one beta program). ~290gb under one hour.

 

[Snapchat]

I have read the earlier posts with interest about the best methods of transferring data and I wonder if anybody has experience of my particular type of set up.
I have an early 2008 Mac Pro with the OS and applications on a small SSD and the home folder on a different internal hard drive along with some of my data + of course a separate TM drive. I want to transfer to my soon to arrive 5K iMac which will have a 512GB SSD. I am intent on putting just the TM drive in an external USB 3 enclosure to make the transfer. Will the set up assistant/MA enable me to extract just the Aps + OS + home folder from my TM backup or will I have to do this partially manually as the originals reside on separate drives. (I can't just transfer everything from TM drive as each backup is about 1.45 TB)