Drive Cloning (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

I need to learn about migration assistant. My wife has lots of apps and preferences she'd rather not manually redo on your new iMac. Odds are we'll do this July 4th weekend. When's your upgrade Ron? Maybe I'll have some info before you do yours.

Shane's got info that a clone transfer will work. But I too would like to see it for real. Maybe it's too many years of PC / Windows / drivers experience, but that trick's too new for this old dog

And my experience is that even OS X gets crufty after a couple of years of installs, upgrades and tweaks. Why clone the cruft? Install fresh on a new machine for best performance.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Dave,

July 4th is upgrade day. I timed my purchase to have my MBP
by the 3rd and spend my day off devoted to upgrading it.

You bring up a very good point. Perhaps it is better to just reinstall
everything manually. This way you get the newest updates and you
aren't transferring some "crusty" version of a previous platform over.

...but then again, like you, too many years of thinking PC has really
clouded my mind as well.

 

[Sam Posten]

Can't really tell you anything to allay your fears. When I moved from iMac to MacPro I did a clean install and just copied my data files using external drives. Today however I would probably solely use MA. I have however used CCC and WinClone to move my Macbook to a bigger hard disk using an external drive, but that was same architecture move.

Apple - Pro - Tips - Move All Your Stuff to a New Mac — Quick
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Assistant_(Apple)

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Sam,

Your Wikipedia reference came up with a useless page.

However, looking at the Apple tips link you provided, I am
intrigued.

Know what? Perhaps I'll use the migration assistant. And why not?
It's the less riskiest of all the options. Will let you know July 4th.

 

[DaveF]

Is Migration Assistant built into OS X or something to buy?

Built in. Requires FireWire connection between the two Macs. Don't know if the G5 has FireWire. And I need a FW cable.

 

[Sam Posten]

Built in and free.

 

[don monteith]

WOW, I didn't know this thread was going to click with so many people. I was thinking of doing this because I have a fresh load of OSX on my iMac. So I don't need to worry about moving over any garbage. My issue is with Adobe CS4 Master Collection. It takes a long time to load and then there are all the updates for it and all the rest of my apps. And because of the way Adobe sold it to me, I have to call them everythime with a challange code. I really hate having to call and spend all that time on the phone. Sounds like migration assistant will be the best choice for me. My MBP works fine. I just want to remove all traces of Windows.

 

[Shane D]

i would try migration assistant. those ars posted i listed the poeple tried swapping drives and they lost audio and ended up doing MA anyway.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

When in doubt write the author of SUPERDUPER....

 

[Carlo_M]

Dave - if you start with a clean clone drive (which I do) CCC also defrags (confirmed by examining w/ iDefrag) so that's not the reason for the lessened drive size. Every six months or so I do a clean clone/clean clone back to defrag my drive with CCC and it works wonders!

 

[Carlo_M]

Well Dave is certainly well known in the Apple/Mac world so if that's his advice, I'd certainly follow it!

 

[Christian Behrens]

Migration Assistent is *the* tool to use when moving from one Mac to another. Simply connect the Mac you want to copy from via FireWire (FW800 if available) and boot it in Target Disk Mode (e.g. via System Preferences/Startup Disk).

Then, during the finishing touches of the first startup of the new Mac, Migration Assistent will ask you whether you want to copy user settings and programs from a different Mac or disk. Just select what applies to your situation.

You could even use a Time Machine backup that's on a networked drive, like a Time Capsule.

This is the fastest way, as you don't need to copy the OS.

Alternatively, you can also just setup your new Mac first, then download all the latest updates etc. and then run Migration Assistent manually. You can find it in /Applications/Utilities.

It really is as straight-forward as it sounds

.

-Christian

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

Actually it's backwards. You would want to clone the existing drive to the new machine and THEN install the specific OS build for your new machine, Unfortunately, if you decide to use this trick you'll have to do a clean install because the installer can't update the operating system if the OS levels (e.g. 10.5.7) are the same on your old setup and the installer disc.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Christian,

Is it almost guaranteed that with Migration assistant almost every
program that now exists on one hardware kit will work on the other?

I mean EVERYTHING?!


Michael,

Thanks for the correction. Now that I look at it, I was backwards.
Probably will not use that method anyway.

 

[Lawsmith]

Holy Smokes! Who woulda thunk it? This is one hot topic, but having just done this, I found (both now and in the past) that the best way to do this is keep the new system on the new MBP, eradicate everything off of that you don't want, then migrate everything else except the old system.

Then, and I understand that many want to avoid this part, re-install all of your drivers. I bet you will find a bunch that you do not want or need. This way you get a stream-lined system with only the things you want on it.

I know this is simplistic and you have to take a bit more time for the drivers, but I can guarantee you that it will save you time in the long run, because every time I have just transferred everything over, something at some point goes awry and you'll find yourself up a river without a systems disk.

After all, you don't want to have everything crash just as the Playboy Bunny is handing you another congratulations at Tao!

 

[DaveF]

My wife is excited about Migration Assistant. She was worried about transferring 5yrs of stuff and preferences and etc to a new computer. This sounds promising.

I have a spare cable stamped "1394b"; would this be a compatible FireWire cable? It's sort of USB sized (like the bigger "hub" USB connector), but definitely not USB.

1394b is a FireWire 800 cable.

While we're talking such things: Is there any big benefit to a FireWire external drive for TimeMachine or SuperDuper backups? They're about double the cost of USB2 drives, so I'd rather stay with USB. But if FW is a big deal...

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

I have not had much luck with Migration Assistant and some third party apps...primarily Adobe Creative Suite apps. I had to re-install them.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Okay. Game Over. That just put a stop to my excitement
about using Migration Assistant. I'll just reinstall everything.

Not a huge ordeal.

 

[DaveF]

Migration Assistant Instructions
Migration Assistant FAQ

We'll try it anyway, and hope for success with CS

 

[Sam Posten]

Don't blame Apple on that one. Adobe are such colossal idiots on how they install CS4 that any and all blame is on them.

Dear Adobe