Best way to upgrade SSD in 2014 Macbook Pro running Big Sur?

Solution 1:

There is a way, without any external software via the asr command. If you have an external drive with a GUID partition scheme this is fine. You have to create an APFS container on the external disk (I suppose you can do it) then run the clone command on this disk :

The terminal command :

diskutil list

will help you for the rest

It's necessary to give in source the volume which is entitled:

Snapshot com.apple.os.update.......

and in destination (target) the APFS container created on the external disk

sudo asr --source /dev/diskxsys1 --target /dev/diskz --erase

The cloning will be done and then you have to test that you manage to start on this external drive. If so, it will suffice to mount the new SSD, format it in APFS and do the opposite.