upgrading to new imac

Dana Abrams wrote:

I have an older imac with 1 TB storage of which 360 GB are being used. I'm thinking of

upgrading to a new imac with 512 GB of storage. If I migrate old to new I will only have

approx. 150 GB of free space. Wondering what users are doing in this situation.

Thanks for any help.

It is wise to consider what you have, what you need and where to go in the future.

1) The sizes of your Music and Photos Libraries

2) How much those Libraries could grow in the next few years.

3) How to backup the new Mac and those Libraries if they are on an external drive.

If you can prune down to around 300GB and are not adding a lot every year. Then you should be fine with a 512GB drive and a good external drive for backup.

If you are starting out with +360 GB and adding a lot of music and photos every year. Then the best move is to get the 1T drive and again use a good external drive to backup. FWIW.... my vote goes here.....

Moving your picture and/or music libraries off to an external drive requires some diligence and extra work on your part. For example, you will want to use a third or fourth external drive to backup the Libraries on the external drive and the iMac. For a second example, it is difficult or impossible to go back if you do not like or want your libraries on an external drive.

you are not required to keep all your data on your internal drive. FWIW, I keep very little beyond macOS on my internal drive. the vast majority of my data is spread across a collection of external SSDs and HDDs.

I think you can move your Photos library fairly easily to an external drive.

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Do yourself a big favor and buy a 1TB iMac!! When you get it please connect the old Macs Time Machine External Hard Disk to the new Mac before turning on the new Mac for the first time. When you turn on the iMac the first time it will launch Setup Assitant, eventually SA will ask if you are migrating from another Mac, select yes, choose the External Hard Disk and it will migrate your docs, apps and settings.

Here are Apple's directions for changing the storage location for new music files. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't suggest a good way of moving your old files.

Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support

In the pre-Catalina days, I think you could have just relocated the whole iTunes Library – then told iTunes where you had put it.

Great advise! Not a whole lot of price difference between the two. And my Time Machine migration worked flawlessly for me.

Great, glad to hear!