I want to transfer a 2011 mini i5 2.3g with and ssd and disk drive to a 2012 Mac Mini 2.3 i7 I found this weekend.
I had just done a clean install with Yosemite on the 2011 a couple of months ago and everything is running great. Can I just transfer both drives to the 2012 mini with no problems?
Does the OS installed have all components for minis (all macs) up to the time of OS's release or does it only install the needed components for the specific mac it is being installed on?

Thanks

Transferring drives should work. From our support docs:

If your "new" Mac is just different, but not really hot off the lines, then cloning another Mac to the new Mac may work fine. When cloning your source Mac to your new Mac, be sure that your source Mac has been updated to at least one later release than what came on the newer Mac. For example, if your newer Mac came with 10.9.3, update your source Mac to 10.9.4 before migrating. If such an update is not available, use the Migration Assistant instead.

[bombich.com]

Sarah

I did this when I made almost the exact same upgrade, from a 2.0 2011 Mini to a 2.6 2012 Mini. Swap the drives out of the 2011 into the 2012. Worked great!

As Sarah said, it should be a fairly easy swap as long as the OS on the older computer is newer than the one that originally came on the new computer.

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In tha 360. MRF User Map



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/2015 01:42PM by Filliam H. Muffman.

Thank you all!
That is just what I wanted to hear.

Inquiring minds want know: how much did the 2012 cost and where was this find made?

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

I found it on craigslist in Portland.
$380 it had 4gb and 2 x 1T. apple care until August 2016

Problems:
1
Mail passwords disappeared after the physical drive transfer and had to be reentered.
and this mail problem
This also happened when setting up the prior mini using migration assistant.

2
My wife says it "Takes twice as long to start up as it did in the i5"

Same drives, same ram. newer mini.
Any ideas?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2015 07:14PM by rexs.

Quote
rexs
I found it on craigslist in Portland.
$380 it had 4gb and 2 x 1T.

Problems:
1
Mail passwords disappeared after the physical drive transfer and had to be reentered.
and this mail problem
This also happened when setting up the prior mini using migration assistant.

2
My wife says it "Takes twice as long to start up as it did in the i5"

Same drives, same ram. newer mini.
Any ideas?

No idea about #1 but #2 may be recaching kexts and reindexing the HD. This doesn't always happen but since the hardware configuration has changed, the OS needs to recache the newly needed extensions. It should speed up after another restart or 2.

Nice score!!!

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

Quote
Lew Zealand

Quote
rexs
I found it on craigslist in Portland.
$380 it had 4gb and 2 x 1T.

Problems:
1
Mail passwords disappeared after the physical drive transfer and had to be reentered.
and this mail problem
This also happened when setting up the prior mini using migration assistant.

2
My wife says it "Takes twice as long to start up as it did in the i5"


Same drives, same ram. newer mini.
Any ideas?

No idea about #1 but #2 may be recaching kexts and reindexing the HD. This doesn't always happen but since the hardware configuration has changed, the OS needs to recache the newly needed extensions. It should speed up after another restart or 2.

Re #2
My wife has a super duper backup plugged in and I had not selected the SSD as the startup disc.
I now starts up lickity split

Thanks to all