Best way to set up Macbook with external hard drive

scthomas272 wrote:

Okay, I am not super tech savy, so I could use some assistance. My 8-year old iMac will not longer boot up and I am not willing to spend money to repair it. It has been super sluggish over the last year or so anyway. I luckily have a full time machine backup, which is about 800 gb (photos, videos, music, etc). I have a great Macbook Pro that is new, but the total storage capacity is only 512 gb. How can I do a full time machine backup from my old iMac to my new Macbook Pro since I do not have enough storage? Ideally I want my Macbook Pro to replace how I had my iMac set up. As in all of my organized photos in the "photos" app, all of my iMovie projects, etc. Is this possible?

It looks like a new iMac with a 1 tb storage drive will set me back about $2K :(

The most trouble free way to move to a new machine, is using the Setup Assistant on the initial boot of a brand new machine— you have one shot here. Set up your MacBook Pro - Apple Support

The second best way is use the Migration Assistant.

How to move your content to a new Mac Transfer to a new Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support