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Old 04-09-2021, 11:14 AM
Ben Jenssen's Avatar
Ben Jenssen Ben Jenssen is offline
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Default Mac Mini upgrade

I bought a i5 mac mini to replace my i3, both 2018, it also has more ram and flash disk space. I never did this before, but since these are identical designs I decided to simply clone the old disk to the new machine. (OK, I have tried this before, in ancient times, and with terribly disappointing results.)

It has worked out great.

There were some snags like I expected, with Apple ID and stuff, but it's fixed and it saved me a LOT of work with migration assistant and setting up everything that I've fine tuned over the last year.

My apple id was the biggest bump, it was confused and gave errors, and I had to type my ID and password so many times I've forgotten. It also caused some secondary issues. But after some time Apple ID is happy again and it even can differentiate the two minis with the same name, it just puts (2) after the name of one of them.

Another thing was bluetooth devices. Believe it or not, I have no less than 3 keyboards and 3 mice around the room. And I need them all, it works for me. I had to "release" them from the i3 and set up connection on the i5. No problem.
And, of course some licenses had to be fixed.

But all this took me an evening, and I'm super happy.

Yesterday: 2018 Mac Mini, quad core i3, 16gb ram and 128 flash drive.
Today: 2018 Mac Mini, six core i5, 32gb ram and 256 flash drive.

I'll be selling the old mini, and I expect the upgrade will have cost me less than $200us.
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Old 04-09-2021, 11:36 AM
musicman691 musicman691 is offline
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Default Re: Mac Mini upgrade

Weren't you looking at 32 gig ram for the old mini? Looks like you got your 32 gig in the new machine - good deal I'd say. And a whole bunch more upgrades. Have you thought about keeping the old mini and using VEPro to link the two machines together? I did that with my old iMac until it kicked the bucket three years back. Sweet setup.
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Old 04-09-2021, 11:55 AM
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Ben Jenssen Ben Jenssen is offline
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Default Re: Mac Mini upgrade

That's right, Jack. I did buy 32gb ram for the old mini, but returned it and got my $200 back. So I got much more for my money this way.

I have pretty much all the processing power I need now, I use very little VI's and modestly sized sessions so I'm not going to pimp it more for now.

I'm thinking this is a way to get me over the next year or two until 2nd or third generation of apple silicon comes along.

Actually, the upgrade seems to have the biggest impact on Adobe Lightroom performance, it's a CPU and RAM eater.

Anyway, I posted this to share about the clone to the new mac thing actually worked. I never seen anything about this kind of thing before. Might be of use to someone.
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Old 04-09-2021, 12:01 PM
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Default Re: Mac Mini upgrade

I have seen memory use of about 48GB with moderate VI use. Easy to check by keeping Activity Monitor on background while you do your work. If it says zero swap used you do not need more memory, but for me 64GB has been the sweet spot.
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Old 04-09-2021, 12:03 PM
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Ben Jenssen Ben Jenssen is offline
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Default Re: Mac Mini upgrade

Zero swap. Yeah, that's what I like.
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