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Airsculpture Author

Level 4

1,641 points

Migration Assistant - From internal to external drive

Is it possible to use migration assistant in a ‘non traditional’ direction ie from the internal drive to an external drive rather than the other way round ?

What I’m planning on doing is formatting a new external SSD drive and then in recovery mode install a fresh installation of Catalina to the SSD and then use migration assistant to migrate my contents - apps and home folder, from the internal spinner to the external SSD

Posted on Oct 4, 2020 5:30 PM

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Airsculpture Author

Level 4

1,641 points

Oct 4, 2020 6:56 PM in response to Barney-15E

I was also planning on leaving the OS on the internal as well as an emergency boot up in case the external SSD fails.

But assuming the SSD has my home folder etc, I can delete the contents of the home folder on the internal to free up space.

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Level 10

113,632 points

Oct 4, 2020 6:42 PM in response to Airsculpture

You should be able to migrate from any startup drive to any other, assuming the destination version is equal to or later than the source.

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Airsculpture Author

Level 4

1,641 points

Oct 4, 2020 6:44 PM in response to Barney-15E

Yeah both on the same version of Catalina.

Many thanks Barney

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Level 10

113,632 points

Oct 4, 2020 8:38 PM in response to Airsculpture

Yes.

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Migration Assistant - From internal to external drive

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