Clone to new MAC

[ojaime]

Hi,

I'm a new SD user and decided to try it beacuse of rave reviews in my company's internal MAC forum.
I'm trying to clone a older Intel based MAC Book Pro to a newer one as I have to return the older one. The new one comes with OSX already installed. Currently backing up older MBP using SD 'Backup- All Files' option. All other options are default. Using external USB Maxtor One Touch as target.

Questions:

- After backup is finished, do I need to make the external HD bootable?
- Or, As I mentioned, new MAC comes with OSX pre installed. Should I boot directly from the new MAC's HD, and just use DU to restore from external drive and that should do it? Or do I need to install SD and restore from it?
- Perhaps I'm missing some steps here?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide

Oscar

[chris_johnsen]

You should not have to do anything extra to have a bootable backup. Just backup to a volume on a disk that is partitioned suitably for your platform (GUID partitioning for Intel Macs). SuperDuper! will do the rest (copying the data and 'blessing' the volume).


When moving your backup to a new system the best way to go is to use the migration option shown during the initial boot of a clean install of the OS. When it tells you to connect the old Mac, either do that (if you still have it) or just connect your backup drive instead of the old Mac (for the purposes of migration, it will work the just like having attached another Mac in Target Disk Mode).

If you have already gone through the initial boot of the new Mac, then you can do a clean install and start over to get the migration option. Migration is possible after the initial boot, but there are some things that can only be copied identically by migrating during the initial boot.

If your new Mac comes with some kind of "company image" of the OS, then the best you can probably do is use the Migration Assistant after the initial boot.


Do not use Disk Utility or SuperDuper! to copy and older OS installation onto a new Mac. Every new Mac comes with a special OS build that is usually a little bit different from the release it claims to be. Even if the new Mac says it is running "10.5.7" and your old system also says it is "10.5.7", they are not exactly the same. The OS that came with the new system has updated drivers and such for the new hardware in the new system.

For older Macs (roughly, those that were sold well before the release date of the last system update that your "source" machine was/is running), you can just boot from the backup volume and use SuperDuper! to copy the backup volume onto a volume on the internal drive.

[jimmynitcher]

Hi

I am in a similar situation and that is helpful to know - so migration assistant takes care of the differences between the OS's on older mac's? As I am just about to upgrade from a Macbook Pro Core Duo to the new 13" Macbook Pro and would like to do this without having to fish out loads of app disks.

thanks

[dnanian]

Yes - although any copy protected applications will likely need to get reactivated.

[weborican]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Yes - although any copy protected applications will likely need to get reactivated.

I'm upgrading from a MBP Core 2 Duo to a MBP i7 and have already done a SD copy instead of going the Migration Assistant route. Can I bring things up to speed by simply running the latest OS combo updater on the i7 MBP, or should I start from scratch and use the migration assistant instead?

I wasn't aware there'd be significant differences in the OS for Intel processor Macs :-(

[dnanian]

If you're already up and running successfully on the copy, you're fine. It wouldn't even boot if it was incompatible.

[weborican]

Originally Posted by dnanian

If you're already up and running successfully on the copy, you're fine. It wouldn't even boot if it was incompatible.

That's it? I mean, if it boots then there's no need to worry about the possibility of any missing drivers that may impact performance or otherwise?

[dnanian]

Yep. If it boots the version of the OS you had supports that Mac.