[mgpalma]

Anyone see any downsides to doing a clean install of Mac OS X 10.11, then all of my apps, finally cloning my setup to a mini so it is identical?

Thanks.

[OreoCookie]

What do you mean with clone here, that goes counter to the notion of a clean install?

[mgpalma]

Clean install on macbook pro, then install apps. Once done clone this drive to a blank drive in my Mac mini. They would then be mirror images of each other without having to go through the entire process again.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by mgpalma 

Clean install on macbook pro, then install apps. Once done clone this drive to a blank drive in my Mac mini. They would then be mirror images of each other without having to go through the entire process again.

Yes, you could do it that way. You can also connect your MacBook Pro directly to the Mac mini using Target Disk Mode where your MacBook Pro behaves like an external hard drive. This way you can skip the step of cloning the drive.

[rumplestiltskin]

Do your clean install on the Macbook, connect the mini in Target Disk Mode, then use Carbon Copy Cloner to do the cloning. (Which sounds exactly like what you want to do)

[honestone]

You could also use SuperDuper! to do the "cloning".

[ghporter]

Super Duper is great for making exact copies. Those will include any lost clusters, cross links, bad data, etc. If that's what you want, go for it. I'd go with something that does error checking in the context of the cloning process. Like Time Machine... Or simply have the Migration Assistant do that error checking while migrating your data.

[Curiosity]

I thought Mac OS from one type of Mac was made specifically for it, and not for another type. How well would Mac OS for a laptop work on a desktop?

[P]

Nope, doesn't work that way generally. If your Mac came with say 10.6, then that version of 10.6 that came with your Mac is special for that Mac, no other version of 10.6 will work on it, and that special version is somewhat unlikely to work elsewhere. If you then upgrade that Mac to 10.7, however, you can then clone that installation and move to another Mac that did not come with 10.7.

That said, I prefer to do a fresh install of the OS itself and then migrate the rest by way of Time Machine, but cloning should work.

[Person Man]

What this poster is wanting to do is no different from what people who manage computer labs with many computers do. They set up one computer with everything they want on the machine, then make an image of that computer's hard drive to copy to the others.

On a cleanly installed computer, starting with a freshly formatted drive, installing the operating system, then all apps, and data files, I would not expect there to be any lost clusters, cross links, or bad data, so SuperDuper! should work just fine, and would be faster than using System Migration or Time Machine.