Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

krx · Jan 4, 2015, 05:09 AM

I have a mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro (5,5 - Intel Core 2 Duo - 2.26 GHz) with 8 GB RAM. I am currently running on OS 10.6.8 and want to upgrade to Yosemite.

I also plan to replace my original drive with an SSD.

I have had a series of Macs going back many years, usually getting a new one every few years and migrating everything from the old to the new. My Macs always start out fast but start slowing down within a short while. I was told this could be due to the fact that I am importing a bunch of old stuff onto my machines and that it would be better to keep the old stuff on a separate drive.

So I want to do a clean install of Yosemite and the small handful of other apps I need.

I will pull the original drive and put it in an enclosure and can either use it or my backup via Time Machine to migrate my files to the SSD via Migration Assistant.

What I am unclear on is what all I will want or need to migrate over, and what I want to avoid. I will bring my documents folder of course but I want to be careful not to bring over any unneeded apps, preferences, libraries, etc. Are there any resources for guiding me through the process? Is Migration Assistant the best tool for this?

turtle777 · Jan 4, 2015, 10:53 PM

Migration Assistant will bring over all your old preferences, libraries, apps etc...
There's no simple way of weeding things out.

I would say a clean install is the better option.

That said, a lot of the system feeling slower is probably caused by the old HD. You might see that your old system is snappy as is once you go to the SSD.

-t

donaldkepler · Jan 15, 2015, 04:45 AM

Well, last month when I was trying to migrate complete data from my old Mac mini to new MacBook Pro 15″ retina model with Migration Assistant feature. But what I noticed that font Century Gothic is missing. I wanted to import from that font from other Mac machines but not known about the fonts residing location. Even I used Finder window but no. Finally my friend advised me to use Airdrop feature. Though it’s a less known feature but let us to share information wirelessly with others.