I have several TB of data (photos, documents etc) on external hard drives from several earlier Macs. I now have an M4 mini and want to access these and transfer to an external SSD. How do I best go about this please?
Apple TV 4K, tvOS 18
I would suggest that if you have a lot of files to copy, that you do it using Carbon Copy Cloner (folder to folder “backup”). Superduper! could probably do this as well.
The issue with using Finder (at least in the past) is that sometimes, when told to copy many files in one batch, it chokes and throws up Error -36. (But if you use Finder and you don’t see Error -36, things should be OK.)
I would suggest that if you have a lot of files to copy, that you do it using Carbon Copy Cloner (folder to folder “backup”). Superduper! could probably do this as well.
The issue with using Finder (at least in the past) is that sometimes, when told to copy many files in one batch, it chokes and throws up Error -36. (But if you use Finder and you don’t see Error -36, things should be OK.)
Format the new SSDs ad APFS (GUID, case insensitive) and use the Finder to copy paste the files there from the old HDDs.
There may be changes in the structure of libraries like iPhoto / Aperture / Photos libraries, or iTunes / Music libraries, but you can deal with that after you get the files consolidated onto a new SSD.
With libraries, you would definitely want to hang onto copies of the originals until you were sure that any conversion to a newer library format had gone well.
Thanks Matti. Am I right in thinking the new Mac Mini will be able to see the files; nothing awkward about formatting as they’re just data? Even though they came from very old Macs?
Correct, if the volumes were created in Snow Leopard or newer; earlier versions supported writing to a filesystem Apple dropped in Catalina.
(261065)
Keep the data on your old drives as additional backup . . . don't get rid of them if they are still working OK.
Moving old data from hard drives to external SSD
