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when migrating to a new mac with less storage than your old mac, what is the best way to split up the files between the macintosh hd and other storage?
Some things to ponder over.
1) How much space is used on the old Mac and what size is the new Mac's drive?
It is best to allow plenty of room on the new Mac for migration and growth.
Clean out the old Mac until there is 100GB less than the new Mac's drive.
Consider returning the new Mac and ordering one with a larger drive.
Free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support
2) Yes you can move your photo and/or music library to an external hard drive.
However you need to use 2 reliable external hard drives for that.
One drive for the libraries and a one to backup the first.
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support
3) How were you planing on Migrating from the old to the new Mac?
Large Network migrations are not reliable and prone to fail.
Ethernet to Ethernet is more reliable but very slow.
Using your Time Machine backup is best.
Transfer to a new Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support
Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support
Some things to ponder over.
1) How much space is used on the old Mac and what size is the new Mac's drive?
It is best to allow plenty of room on the new Mac for migration and growth.
Clean out the old Mac until there is 100GB less than the new Mac's drive.
Consider returning the new Mac and ordering one with a larger drive.
Free up storage space on your Mac - Apple Support
2) Yes you can move your photo and/or music library to an external hard drive.
However you need to use 2 reliable external hard drives for that.
One drive for the libraries and a one to backup the first.
Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support
Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support
3) How were you planing on Migrating from the old to the new Mac?
Large Network migrations are not reliable and prone to fail.
Ethernet to Ethernet is more reliable but very slow.
Using your Time Machine backup is best.
Transfer to a new Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support
Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support
This eval may be easier for you if you do "About this Mac..." from your Apple menu and select the "Storage" tab. Click the "Manage..." button to get this:
It shows the larger files in groups in the sidebar, but clicking "Reduce Clutter" show individual files sorted by size:
In this shot, I can see five movies I could move to external storage, plus an MS installer I could probably delete.
Thank you for all of the responses. I am currently using a iMac (late 2013) with 3.2TB Fusion drive and am looking to upgrade to the M2 Mac mini or Mac studio. All in, I'm using 1.3TB of storage but was investigating options for when it is time to migrate everything over.
You're welcome.
IMHO the 2T upgrade to the Mid and Upper level M2 Mac Mini's is worth the extra $600, versus farming out your Libraries to External drives. Buy Mac mini - Apple
Put the lesser used user data on the external drive. But don't fail to back up that data too if it's important to you.
Generally photo, video and sound libraries are easiest to transfer and use, since they tend to be self-contained.
Thanks again. My hope initially was to keep my documents and downloads folders on the external drive and keep all the app-related materials (excluding project files and the like) on the internal HD.
when migrating to a new mac with less storage than your old mac, what is the best way to split up the files between the macintosh hd and other storage?
