Migration Strategy From 2019 MacPro to Studio M3 Ultra

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Level 2

478 points

Migration Strategy From 2019 MacPro to Studio M3 Ultra

My M3 Ultra will be arriving 3/21/25 and have some questions to the group about best migration strategies. The migration from my prior MacPro to the 2019 and from my last MB Pro to my M1 MB Pro were nightmares so want to clarify workflow. In both cases, Apple Support had to take me through some commands in Terminal to get the migration to complete.

MacPro is still running Ventura. I maintain a TimeMachine backup to external drive. The goal here is as seemless as possible migrating at start up from the TimeMachine drive.

So obviously just connect monitor, keyboard, mouse and TimeMachine drive to new Studio. No other hubs, peripherals, hubs, etc.

There is supposed to be an immediate software update to 15.3.x for Studio. Is this run before migration begins?

Do I skip all preliminaries like location and network and go right to migrate from a TimeMachine backup?

Does the fact that the TimeMachine backup was done on a machine running earlier version of OS matter?

I know it sounds simplistic for someone whose first Mac came right after the 1984 commercial-- but have elevated anxiety about this migration. Of course, I'm not wiping the MacPro until the Studio is running smoothly.

Posted on Mar 11, 2025 5:51 AM

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Answer 1

tbirdvet

Level 6

15,533 points

Mar 11, 2025 11:10 AM in response to Ned Soltz

As already stated you should have no issue migrating from old to new. I have done that many times and no issues. If I should have an older app that does not work it was easily updated or moved to trash after the fact.

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Answer 2

Ned Soltz Author

Level 2

478 points

Mar 15, 2025 5:58 PM in response to Ned Soltz

Now another refinement of question-- and I appreciate the help.

I intend to migrate only my folder in user folder. That folder contains Documents, Desktop, Photos (all of which toal around 400gb). But also in that folder are things no longer in user like 1Password, some Avid files). Can I delete apparently unnecessary items from my user folder? In prior Intel Mac to intel Mac migrations, I just migrated the whole backup which as we've been discussing is not the best idea. Getting more confused with this by the day.