When you give up on your old Mac and buy a new Mac, you must do data migration work. It’s easy to use Mac’s “migration assistant”, but if you manually migrate data to an external HDD, you can pinpoint data migration.
I will explain how to migrate data without using Mac’s migration assistant.
[Mac]How to migrate data without migration assistant
How do you migrate data when you buy a new Mac? Apple’s recommended method for data migration is to use the “Migration Assistant”.
Mac’s “Migration Assistant” is a dedicated application that is installed as standard on Macs in order to smoothly migrate data between Macs or between Macs and Windows.
Using “Migration Assistant” is convenient because you can migrate the old Mac environment to the new Mac as it is, but it may take time to complete the data migration, or the operation may become slow or unstable after the data migration. .
In particular, when transferring data from an Intel-equipped Mac to an Apple silicon-equipped Mac, it seems that the work may not be done smoothly. Also, if the source macOS of the data migration is the latest version than the destination macOS, there is also the disadvantage that “Migration Assistant” cannot be used.
Therefore, it may be better to migrate data without using “migration assistant”. In this article, I will show you how to migrate data without using Mac’s “Migration Assistant”.
[Step 1]Copy old Mac data to an external HDD
The way to migrate data to a new Mac without using the Mac’s “Migration Assistant” is to copy the old Mac’s data to an external HDD, and then paste the copied data on the external HDD to the new Mac.
As a method of migrating data to an external HDD, there is a method of creating a backup on an external HDD using TimeMachine, which is a standard function of Mac.
However, if you use TimeMachine to transfer data to an external HDD and then transfer data to a new Mac, you will end up transferring unnecessary data, which is inconvenient.
By connecting the old Mac to the external HDD and transferring only the necessary data directly from the Mac to the external HDD, it is very convenient because only the necessary data can be transferred with pinpoint accuracy. You can also transfer photos, videos, or just the data on your desktop to your new Mac.
Let’s see how to transfer data from Mac to external hard drive.
When you connect the Mac and the external HDD with a USB cable, the external HDD icon will be displayed on the top right of the Mac desktop screen, so click it.
All the data stored on the external hard drive will be displayed.You can transfer data by dragging and dropping the files you want to transfer to the external HDD.
[Step 2]Copy data from external HDD to new Mac
Once you have copied all the data you need from your old Mac to your external hard drive, the next step is to copy the data you copied to your external hard drive to your new Mac. The method is basically the same as the previous procedure.
When you connect the new Mac and the external HDD with a USB cable, click the external HDD icon displayed on the right side of the desktop screen of the new Mac.
All files saved on the external HDD are displayed, so drag and drop the necessary files and data to the new Mac.
[Note]A conversion adapter is required depending on the type of external HDD.
So far, I have introduced how to migrate data using an external HDD without using “Migration Assistant”. You may have found it very convenient to manually migrate data from your old Mac to your new Mac using an external hard drive because it’s easy and quick.
However, there is one important caveat to keep in mind when manually migrating data using an external hard drive. Depending on the external HDD, you may need a conversion adapter. Mac USB ports are USB-C.
Since many external HDDs use USB-A, a conversion adapter is required to convert to USB-C in order to connect to a Mac. There are various prices for conversion adapters to USB-C, but some can be purchased for about 1000 yen. Buy it if you need it.
Also, if you’re using an iMac, buying an iMac-compatible USB-C clamp hub that works with any USB port is convenient, but it costs over 6,000 yen. It’s expensive, so think carefully before deciding to buy.