- Joined
- Jun 7, 2006
- Messages
- 314
- Reaction score
- 11
- Points
- 18
- Location
- NYC
- Your Mac's Specs
- Late 2015 27" iMac, 3.3ghz, M395 gpu, 2tb Fusion, 8gb
My 250gb internal drive crashed and I decided to buy a 120gb OWC SSD drive to replace it. I have a Time Machine backup and want to recreate my setup on the new smaller drive. My intent is to put the media and document files onto an external drive so that only the system/app files are on the SSD.
How do I do this with the least amount of pain? I don't want to break the links to the user folders that the operating system keeps, I want to keep the settings on mail and all of my apps intact. Will Time Machine let me do a system restore even though the data won't all fit? Or should I do a clean OSX SL install first and then move files in? If I do the latter will I have problems getting things to work if I just move the apps folder? Are there settings that only get copied across if I do the full restore?
This is the first time I've had to do anything complicated on my iMac, usually it all just works. Maybe I should install a large enough HD first to recover than rearrange everything the way I want it first, then do the SSD? Now that I've said that it doesn't seem like a bad idea. There's always a use for an extra hard drive. Would I be able to do a full restore from TM to a USB drive or does it need to be an internal drive?
The computer is a first gen Intel 20" iMac, 1gb ram (not 1.5 as in my specs at the left), originally a 250gb drive OSX 10.6.6
NEVER MIND. THE OLD HD STARTED TO WORK AGAIN. Go figure. Maybe it's because the SSD I ordered is sitting in the shipping box right next to the computer.
How do I do this with the least amount of pain? I don't want to break the links to the user folders that the operating system keeps, I want to keep the settings on mail and all of my apps intact. Will Time Machine let me do a system restore even though the data won't all fit? Or should I do a clean OSX SL install first and then move files in? If I do the latter will I have problems getting things to work if I just move the apps folder? Are there settings that only get copied across if I do the full restore?
This is the first time I've had to do anything complicated on my iMac, usually it all just works. Maybe I should install a large enough HD first to recover than rearrange everything the way I want it first, then do the SSD? Now that I've said that it doesn't seem like a bad idea. There's always a use for an extra hard drive. Would I be able to do a full restore from TM to a USB drive or does it need to be an internal drive?
The computer is a first gen Intel 20" iMac, 1gb ram (not 1.5 as in my specs at the left), originally a 250gb drive OSX 10.6.6
NEVER MIND. THE OLD HD STARTED TO WORK AGAIN. Go figure. Maybe it's because the SSD I ordered is sitting in the shipping box right next to the computer.
