I've used SuperDuper! to restore hard drives, but whenever I've migrated to a new machine, I've set it up from scratch. That's a lot of work.
I'm trying to figure out the most efficient way to migrate to a new machine such that I end up with the same operating environment as the current machine, with least post-migration setup work. And without screwing anything up (e.g. iCloud).
The SuperDuper! FAQ says don't do this, but gives as the reason the (valid) risk of cloning with an macOS version earlier than what the target machine supports. That shouldn't be an issue here, because (sadly) "new" iMacs are actually 2017 models, which originally (and still?) came with macOS 10.12.
4 Sierra. Sierra is up to 10.12.
6 now.
Resources:
- 2013 iMac with Fusion drive, Sierra 10.12.6
- New 2017 iMac with Fusion drive
- SuperDuper!
- Thunderbolt cable and adapter
- Gigabit Ethernet
- USB 3 external drive, containing SuperDuper! clone of old iMac
Would the following procedure work?
- Boot up new iMac and create account with same name (and presumably UID) as the old iMac
- If new iMac is running High Sierra, erase hard drive and install Sierra. Go to step 1.
- Sign into iCloud (so that it can save the File Vault password in step 6).
- Install latest Sierra combo update (so it installs any firmware updates), and
- Install latest security update, for same reason
- Turn on File Vault 2, let it complete encryption
- Connect to new iMac in Thunderbolt Target Disk mode
- Use SuperDuper to Smart Update clone from old iMac to new iMac
One alternative would be to do the clone before anything else. And/or, using the external drive as an intermediary: clone old iMac to drive, boot new iMac from that drive, clone from drive to new iMac.
Since the migration is Sierra to Sierra, and Fusion drive to Fusion drive, APFS shouldn't be a factor.
Since I've never tried this before, and so far haven't found hints for successful migration via clone, any advice would be appreciated.