hoakley January 4, 2019 Macs, Technology

**Setting up a new (or repurposed) Mac:** 7 Choices diagrammed

I promised to diagram the choices involved in System Migration. Trying to compose an all-encompassing diagram was just too daunting, as it looked like it was going to spill over several pages. For most people setting up a new or repurposed Mac, the fundamental choice is whether to use System Migration, either during setup or as Migration Assistant later, or not. I hope that the table below summarises the choices involved in that.

migration2

In a previous article about System Migration or Migration Assistant, I presented a diagram of what happens during that process. In the light of my recent exploration of System Migration in Mojave, I have updated that with considerable detail. I hope that you find this revised diagram even more useful, for example when trying to troubleshoot problems which occur during System Migration.

migration1

That completes this series on setting up a new or repurposed Mac, unless you can think of a topic which I haven’t yet covered. Happy upgrading!

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Setting up a new (or repurposed) Mac: 7 Choices diagrammed – The Eclectic Light Company – Jerry's Mac Blog on January 4, 2019 at 1:55 pm

[…] Source: Setting up a new (or repurposed) Mac: 7 Choices diagrammed – The Eclectic Light Company […]

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Weekly News Summary for Admins — 2019-01-04 – Cebu Scripts on January 5, 2019 at 12:19 am

[…] Setting up a new (or repurposed) Mac: 7 Choices diagrammed – Howard Oakley […]

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EcleX on January 5, 2019 at 8:37 pm

Thanks. It would be nice also an article about doing it with SuperDuper (or similar), and comparison (advantages and disadvantages) versus Migration Assistant.

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- 4
  
  hoakley on January 5, 2019 at 10:37 pm
  
  I did: it’s here.
  There is now only one real way to use a clone: as the source for either System Migration (Migration Assistant) or manual copying.
  If you look at the advice given by Mike Bombich, for example, on the C3 site, he specifically warns against the old scheme of cloning from your previous system onto the internal storage of a new Mac. It either won’t work at all, or it’s so complex and fiddly to get working that it is just not worth trying.
  So yes, a clone on an external drive is a good source to use with Migration Assistant, or from which to copy files over manually, depending on which you have chosen to do.
  Howard.
  
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  - 5
    
    EcleX on January 6, 2019 at 8:14 am
    
    Do you mean with macOS 10.14 Mojave, T2 chip or both? I mean, I have recently successfully done the following on macOS 10.12.6 (16G1710) Sierra while new Mac (iMac 5K 27-inch, mid 20187) logic board was replaced (GPU failure causing “Sleep Wake Failure”, showing frozen Mac, black screen requiring forced shut down, unexpected reboots or shutdowns, as well as freezing while showing Apple logo icon and progress bar while rebooting or cold booting (once every three trials or so, requiring forced shut down; It was driving me nuts – I first thought it was a software issue, yet was hardware problem):
    
    – Booted and worked from a SuperDuper clone (on Samsung Portable SSD T5) without problem on older iMac (21.5-inch, late 2012).
    
    and
    
    – Copying from such external disk to the internal disk of new Mac (once repaired) with SuperDuper, to boot and work from such internal disk.
    
    I did not use Migration Assistant and all was fine. I reset SMC and PRAM, reboot in safe mode (pressing Shift key until login window showed; then rebooted normally), run Cocktail pilot, rebuilt directory of disk with DiskWarrior and repaired with Disk Utility (in such order) before such actions.
    
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      hoakley on January 6, 2019 at 9:50 am
      
      I have covered this in detail in this article for those setting up a new Mac, and in this article for those dealing with preparing a Mac for service/repair and restoring it afterwards. Yes, they do both include cloning as a method, and point out that cloning as a means of creating an internal boot volume for a new Mac is likely to be a road to disaster.
      However, cloning between two older models running older macOS can still be useful. That is a completely separate topic, and not about setting a new Mac up.
      Most new Macs now have T2 chips. Most new Macs won’t run any version of macOS earlier than High Sierra. Most new Macs now have internal storage formatted in APFS. Cloning from an older Mac, even running High Sierra or Mojave, is not likely to be a good way of setting such a new Mac up. There are circumstances in which an expert may get it to work – but those are getting rarer all the time. Later this year we’re expecting new iMacs which will undoubtedly have T2 chips, as will the Mac Pro 2019.
      Howard.
      
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EcleX on January 7, 2019 at 6:35 pm

I understand then that the problem may arise when cloning with SuperDuper (or similar):

– From Mac without T2 chip to Mac with such chip.

But no problem when cloning:

– Between Macs without T2 chips.
– From Mac with T2 chip to Mac without such chip.
– Between Macs with T2 chip in both.

Is that correct? Thanks.

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- 8
  
  hoakley on January 7, 2019 at 6:45 pm
  
  No, that’s not what I wrote above. If you want the recommendations of Mike Bombich – made before the release of T2 minis and MacBook Airs – he gives them here. I quote from the opening of that article:
  “If your new Mac is brand new, use Migration Assistant to migrate your data to your new Mac.”
  Given that Mike sells Carbon Copy Cloner and is a great enthusiast for cloning, I think that’s a pretty clear answer.
  If your ‘new’ Mac isn’t actually new but repurposed, then you may get away with it. That article contains more detailed advice for doing that if you wish.
  Have you tried cloning to a Mac with a T2 chip? It is fiendishly complicated because of Secure Boot. That might be a good project for someone with plenty of time to spare, but for a regular user or system administrator it is not a wise choice.
  Howard.
  
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EcleX on January 7, 2019 at 10:28 pm

So, the advice is to use Migration Assistant if at least one of the Macs has T2 chip?

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- 10
  
  hoakley on January 7, 2019 at 10:46 pm
  
  No. My advice is that if you are setting up a brand new Mac of whatever model, your first choice should be to use System Migration, either during initial setup or once its macOS has been updated. If that isn’t possible or feasible, then I’d opt for manual migration. Only if the user is expert in cloning to Macs and is prepared to spend what could be a long time wrestling with the results would I ever consider the old cloning process to be worth trying. If you have many identical Macs to set up, yes, it is a potential solution so long as they don’t have T2 chips. But it requires considerable experience, and is not for the average user. Not that I could see an average user wanting to set up two or more identical cloned iMac Pros or even MacBook Airs!
  I note that Mike Bombich doesn’t limit his recommendation not to use cloning for setting up a brand new Mac to those with T2 chips either.
  Howard.
  
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EcleX on January 8, 2019 at 12:25 pm

Thanks. In my experience, I have had no problem using SuperDuper to clone older in newer Macs without T2 chips and up to macOS 10.12 Sierra. I have not tested beyond that.

But I have had at least one case of partial transfer of files using Migration Assistant, without any warning. I noticed by sheer chance, since the used disk space was much lower on the destination Mac. SuperDuper did it fine. I must say that the source disk had some kind of weird problem (DiskWarrior and Disk Utility did not find any problem, though).

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- 12
  
  hoakley on January 8, 2019 at 12:45 pm
  
  Well, in Classic Mac OS we used to drag-copy the System Folder to make a bootable disk!
  Yes, I well remember cloning from one internal hard drive to another, then popping the clone and making it the startup disk of another Mac Pro. It was remarkably quick and simple.
  Sadly, life gets more complicated. I started to experience clone failures before El Capitan, and they have become increasingly problematic ever since. At the same time, System Migration seems to have improved. I think that we are now well past the crossover point where System Migration is preferable to cloning for new Macs, and both Mojave and T2 chips have pretty well nailed that now.
  I dread to think what would have happened had I tried cloning my old iMac running Mojave to this new iMac Pro. I would probably have still been trying to sort the mess out!
  Howard.
  
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13

EcleX on January 9, 2019 at 4:51 pm

Here we go:

If macOS’s Migration Assistant fails, here are other ways to move accounts
https://www.macworld.com/article/3330637/macs/if-macoss-migration-assistant-fails-here-are-other-ways-to-move-accounts.html

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- 14
  
  hoakley on January 9, 2019 at 5:18 pm
  
  Thanks.
  I’ve just guided a friend through similar problems when trying System Migration during setup hung completely. He had no joy from Apple Support, but I then suggested that he followed one of the recommendations in this series of articles. He completed the setup as a new user, then connected the Time Machine backups from his old Mac and ran Migration Assistant on those. It worked a treat, and not one command had to be typed into Terminal.
  I notice that article doesn’t suggest cloning, though, and that Mike Bombich’s latest update to C3 provides more detailed advice for those trying to clone to T2-equipped Macs in terms of changes which need to be made in Recovery mode before they might stand any chance of success.
  Forgive me if I don’t try to include those additional methods on the diagrams!
  Howard.
  
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