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Level 1

4 points

Migrating two different Macs on one, but with separate users

I bought a Mac mini M1 and want to migrate my data as well as my wife's. We have been using two very old MacBook Pro's and we each created a Time Machine backup in order to restore an account on the new Mac mini. When I migrate my account everything works fine. We created a new user with admin priviledges for her. As my wife started migrating her's, it wants to override the hard drive and delete my already migrated user and data. How can we solve this dilemma?

Thanks for any help!

Mac mini, macOS 11.6

Posted on Nov 25, 2022 8:30 AM

Top-ranking reply

MartinR

Level 7

21,539 points

Posted on Nov 25, 2022 5:33 PM

Each of your two TM backups represents a different computer in its entirety, so when you run the second restore it's going want to to overwite the first. As far as I know, TM restore does not act like Migration Assistant, and I'm not even sure Migration Assistant would work, either, in this case, at a minimum because you cannot migrate an old account into an existing new user account.

Since you have already created a new user (admin) account for your wife on the M1, I suggest just copying over her data files. She may have to apply read-write permissions to "Everyone" on all her data files, however, because they are currently owned by the user on the previous MBP. Also, if not already done, she will have to set up various preferences in her new user account on the M1.

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Migrating two different Macs on one, but with separate users

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