Restoring Backup to Mac Pro

[skandrikar]

Yesterday, my hard disk of my non-intel mac crashed and need to be replaced. Instead of replacing the harddisk, I am going to be Mac Pro tomorrow. I am wondering whether I can restore the back up taken from my old machine, and what is the steps involved. Do I need to install superduper first, before I can start the process or I can do it with disk utility.

Regards,
Shahid

[chris_johnsen]

Short answer: Do not restore. Use Migration Assistant on your new computer to bring over your old machine's settings, users' data, applications, etc.

A system backup from a PPC Mac cannot be restored to an Intel Mac. This is because not all of the installed OS is Universal, at least as of 10.4. Even if your old system was an Intel Mac, it is generally a good idea to only use the version of Mac OS X that came with your computer until a new OS update comes out. This is due to driver support. The custom OS build that comes with new hardware will support all the latest hardware components, but even the latest downloadable OS update might not have those drivers if it is older than the new hardware. This also means that you should never restore/boot a backup of a system running an OS release that is older that the release date of the hardware revision of the target machine. Restoring/booting on an older machine is OK. For success, the restore/boot target machine should always be older than the OS release that is on the backup.

[skandrikar]

Thanks,

I don't think I have a choice than to replace the hard disk and then do the migration.

Regards,
Shahid

[chris_johnsen]

Hmm, I clearly did not explain it properly.

You should be able to migrate just fine from your backup itself. Migration does not require a working system, just being able to mount a disk containing the old system. The backup of your old system should suffice for migration to a brand-new machine (just not for direct restoring to a brand-new machine).

[skandrikar]

Let me try tomorrow and see whether it works.

Regards,
Shahid

[skandrikar]

Chris,

It worked great. Thanks.

Shahid