Transfer a Macintosh hardware installation to Parallels Desktop virtual disk
Setting
a slowly dying macintosh needs to be virtualised to be kept alive
Prerequisites
- a Macintosh (Mac Mini late 2009)
- another Macintosh (iMac 5K 2017)
- Parallels Desktop v15 (later herein only refered to as PD)
- a bootable stick (to create the bootable disk in Parallels)
- a TimeMachine backup of the Mac in question (here Mac Mini) on an external hard drive
steps to be taken
- create a TimeMachine backup of the mac to transfer on an external disk
- copy additional file to this disk if needed (i.e.: when using Little Sntich -> export Rules !)
- install PD
- create the bootable stick * (see https://carlothecat.chickenkiller.com/gist/create_a_bootable_installer_disk_image_from_InstallMacOSX.dmg)
- create a new virtual machine in PD (adjust # cpus, ram and disk space according to your needs)
- start that up using the stick as boot medium and install macos
- during setup migration assistent will show up: use the external backup drive here
- proceed with the aftermath if neccessairy