migration

[scottbushey]

After a good run w/ my 2007 Imac 24", It has died. Two years ago I did add a 1 TB SSD, which helped immensely; I purchased a new Imac 2017 w/ 1 TB SSD. Adding 32 gb of memory.

In talking with a friend of mine, I told him that I was going to attach my EVO 1 TB SSD that I used in my old 2007 Imac, to my new Imac with a sata connector to Thunderbolt, another external 1 TB drive I used for my Time machine backups on my 2007 for new TM back-ups. I wanted to use the external Evo SSD for most of my programs that are still on it and the TM drive for continued TM back-ups. As well, I purchased a 8 TB WD backup for all three HD's, i.e. new imac, ssd and tm drive; I made mention that I was going to use the Evo to access some programs that I used on my previous Mac. He said that I can't do that because that Evo drive has an OS on it and that will cause a conflict with the new Imac OS. Is this true?

Another concern: I understand that when I want to use the external HD for the time machine portion, the new Imac wil ask me 'do u want to 'inherit' this TM drive for the new computer?'. If I do this, I understand that I will not be able to ever use the HD on the originating computer (though it is toast anyways'). My question is, will it still keep all the TM backups from my original computer or will that all go bye bye?

For the record, my New Imac is w/ 1 TB SSD, 40 GB ram.

I pray this is coherent. Forgive me, if not.

 

[MacInWin]

Welcome to the forum. I need to tell you that the owners of this site plan to close it down permanently some time soon. Read the two links in my sig for the details and for how to stay in touch with the folks who volunteer here.

The OS on the external won't interfere with running programs that are on it, but I would recommend that you just go ahead and migrate the data on it to the new machine. If you have NOT gotten the new one yet, when you fire it up at the first use, it will offer to migrate data. Take that opportunity and point to the drive (You'll need to have it ready to connect). Or, if all the programs you want are on the TM backup, you can point to that, too. Let it do the migration and when it is done you will have on the new machine the exact same programs and data that you had on the old one, as long as the applications meet the 64-bit requirement of the new OS. Whether those older versions will run will depend on the individual application, they may need updating.

The TM question is a bit more tricky. Generally, when TM runs it creates a folder on the designated backup drive called "backups.backupdb" and in that folder is a folder with the computer name. Within those named folders are the dated folders for the backups of those machines. For example, I have a MBP named "MBP17" and another named "MBP15" and in the backups.backupdb folder there are two folders with those names. Within those individual folders are the backups of MBP17 and MBP15. But I didn't let TM "inherit" the backup, I just used the migration from the older one and then started the newer. Eventually I will delete the MBP17 backups when I fully retire the MBP17.

Does that help?

 

[scottbushey]

Welcome to the forum. I need to tell you that the owners of this site plan to close it down permanently some time soon. Read the two links in my sig for the details and for how to stay in touch with the folks who volunteer here.

The OS on the external won't interfere with running programs that are on it, but I would recommend that you just go ahead and migrate the data on it to the new machine. If you have NOT gotten the new one yet, when you fire it up at the first use, it will offer to migrate data. Take that opportunity and point to the drive (You'll need to have it ready to connect). Or, if all the programs you want are on the TM backup, you can point to that, too. Let it do the migration and when it is done you will have on the new machine the exact same programs and data that you had on the old one, as long as the applications meet the 64-bit requirement of the new OS. Whether those older versions will run will depend on the individual application, they may need updating.

The TM question is a bit more tricky. Generally, when TM runs it creates a folder on the designated backup drive called "backups.backupdb" and in that folder is a folder with the computer name. Within those named folders are the dated folders for the backups of those machines. For example, I have a MBP named "MBP17" and another named "MBP15" and in the backups.backupdb folder there are two folders with those names. Within those individual folders are the backups of MBP17 and MBP15. But I didn't let TM "inherit" the backup, I just used the migration from the older one and then started the newer. Eventually I will delete the MBP17 backups when I fully retire the MBP17.

Does that help?

Thanks for the help.

So, if I wanted to keep the new imac 'fresh', can I just run all the programs I originally had on my previous imac (the SDD I will be using externally)? Why do I need to migrate all of the programs etc?

 

[MacInWin]

Some applications assume they are being run from the boot drive, will generate errors if not. It's better to migrate. The troublesome to migrate are Adobe and Microsoft apps.