Restore MBP to Mac Mini?

[SearchMaster]

I have a late 2011 Mac Book Pro that I use daily, and a 2010 Mac Mini that was given to me recently.

I have some batch processes that I have written that fire up a Chrome browser and scrape websites for information then update the local db and call a webservice on a production URL. Some of these processes take hours and I would prefer to run them on the unused Mac Mini instead of my heavily used MBP, but I really don't want to take hours and hours to get the environment set up on the Mac Mini to be able to replicate what my MBP has.

Is it possible to restore a Time Machine backup from the MacBook onto the Mac Mini, assuming they are running the same version of OSX (or even better, restore the OS onto it as well)? Migration Assistant perhaps? I've not restored a TM backup or used MA so I don't know how well they handle system libraries, applications, database files, etc.

 

[geekyny]

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to do this using MA. You just need access to the drive where the Time Machine backup is stored on the Mini and then launch MA. The wizard will give you the option to transfer your information through the Time Machine backup. From there you'll be prompted to choose a stored volume from within the selected backup archive and then you'll be asked to choose which account you're choosing to restore so in your case, you'll choose the account you're doing the batch processes with on the MBP. You'll be able to manually choose which information you want to transfer and everything should be pretty self explanatory from there.

Hope this helps

 

[TheStu]

Clone the MBP's drive to the Mini.