Freeflight
Level 1 (4 points)
Mac OS X

Q: Migrating data to new SSD after late-2009 upgrade

I'm about to upgrade my Mac mini 3,1 late-2009 to 8GB of OWC RAM, and to fit an OWC 240GB SSD in the optical drive space. My original HDD will stay in the machine. My question is how do I go about making the SSD the boot drive, install El Capitan, and transfer a bunch of data from the HDD? Can I do all this with both drives installed?


TIA

Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion, late-2009 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo

Posted on Jan 30, 2016 8:21 PM

by lllaass,Solvedanswer
lllaass lllaass
Level 10 (190,414 points)
Apple Watch
A:

Yes, you can do it with both installed.

Yu can first upgrade RAM and install the SSD as a second disk.

Then boot normally to the old disk.

Go to the Mac App Store and download the El Capitan installer.

Run the install and select the SSD and the location to install EC. You will have to use Disk Utility to format the SSD in journaled format if the SSD is not an option for install location.

After installing EC on the SSD yo can either copy data from old disk to new dis or use:

Move your content to a new Mac - Apple Support

To select which disk is the boot disk go to System Preferences>Startup disk and select the one yo want to normally boot.

You can always boot with the Option key depressed to select the boot disk

Posted on Jan 31, 2016 3:07 PM

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Freeflight

Q: Migrating data to new SSD after late-2009 upgrade

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  • by lllaass,Solvedanswer

    lllaass lllaass Jan 31, 2016 3:07 PM in response to Freeflight
    Level 10 (190,414 points)
    Apple Watch
    Jan 31, 2016 3:07 PM in response to Freeflight

    Yes, you can do it with both installed.

    Yu can first upgrade RAM and install the SSD as a second disk.

    Then boot normally to the old disk.

    Go to the Mac App Store and download the El Capitan installer.

    Run the install and select the SSD and the location to install EC. You will have to use Disk Utility to format the SSD in journaled format if the SSD is not an option for install location.

    After installing EC on the SSD yo can either copy data from old disk to new dis or use:

    Move your content to a new Mac - Apple Support

    To select which disk is the boot disk go to System Preferences>Startup disk and select the one yo want to normally boot.

    You can always boot with the Option key depressed to select the boot disk

  • by Freeflight,

    Freeflight Freeflight Jan 31, 2016 3:10 PM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 31, 2016 3:10 PM in response to lllaass

    Thank you very much for your very concise reply. Much appreciated. Now, I'm just going to get the putty knife out......