The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
I'm trying to copy data from my 2012 iMac to a thunder bolt SSD drive so I can boot from new drive to my mini 4.
For some reason my old iMac's time machine will not backup. So I need to find another solution to transfer my data.
As already stated use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy all your data to the external drive then use that to transfer your files to the new Mac during setup. Then from your M4 Mac boot into recovery to install Sequoia on the external which will make it bootable.
As already stated use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy all your data to the external drive then use that to transfer your files to the new Mac during setup. Then from your M4 Mac boot into recovery to install Sequoia on the external which will make it bootable.
You did not say what macOS the old Mac uses so pick the compatible CCC and backup to the new SSD. Then booted from Recovery install macOS to the new Mac and then use Migration Assistant to copy the data from the new SSD. Then update CCC to the new macOS.
gerrymoffett wrote:
I'm trying to copy data from my 2012 iMac to a thunder bolt SSD drive so I can boot from new drive to my mini 4.
If you are referring to booting to the operating system on the drive that is impossible. The latest Macs can only boot to an external drive that were created by that particular Mac. In addition, any Mac cannot boot to an operating system older than what the Mac was shipped with.
My iMac is on Mojave 10
Transfer data to new ssd
