Restore to new machine w/different architecture

[MacNovice]

Hi,

This gem appeared in the news recently:
http://www.electronista.com/articles...seize.laptops/

Say you are traveling overseas with your MB/MBP and randomly your laptop is 'requisitioned' by Customs upon your re-entry to the USA.

Being a smart person three times over,
a) for buying a Mac in the first place,
b) for using SuperDuper, and
c) for making a full backup before you left on your trip and leaving the backup at home in a safe place,
you now have to restore that backup to another machine. Why? Because your MB/MBP could talk as long as 2 months to be returned to you, and two months is a long time to be out of business if your business depends on having that machine.

So let's now say that you were using a Macbook and you now rush out and get a Macbook Air as a 'replacement', or maybe one of the new Macbook Pro's rumored to be coming in September. But there are some differences in the underlying architecture of the motherboard, the graphics controller, and a bunch of other things vs. the MacBook Customs is storing for you.

How should one use SuperDuper to restore your environment (apps, user data, preferences) onto the new machine? What sort of backup is best suited for this, ie. should the backup be made in a certain way to maximize the likelihood of success in the restore to a different platform?

I'm asking all this because I know in the Windows world that a disaster recovery backup using most backup software seldom works well if the underlying architecture is different (ie. move from a Dell laptop to an HP laptop, or even within the same manufacturer's product line - especially if the 'seized' laptop is a year or more older than the replacement).

Thanks for any help.

[dnanian]

As long as the OS version you're running came out after the Mac you're trying to restore to, it should work just fine as a direct restore.

[MacNovice]

Originally Posted by dnanian

As long as the OS version you're running came out after the Mac you're trying to restore to, it should work just fine as a direct restore.

Just to clarify....me being a Mac novice....

1) Ok - new Macbook X has say 10.5.3, whereas my Macbook has 10.4.11 --
I restore only apps and userdata - correct?

2) What about FileVault'ed partitions or encrypted disk images? Any issues restoring these?

3) What about user accounts (eg. an explicitly defined administrator account and my personal user account) and user preferences? These don't get restored because they could be different managed differently internally between os versions?


Thanks for any clarifications.

[dnanian]

1) You'd actually migrate in that case ("Copy from another Mac" during a first startup on a clean install)

2) Not if they were backed up properly; should work with a full restore or a migrate (as above).

3) Should be OK, although some preferences are specific to the 'host' and would be at default values.

[MacNovice]

Originally Posted by dnanian

1) You'd actually migrate in that case ("Copy from another Mac" during a first startup on a clean install)

2) Not if they were backed up properly; should work with a full restore or a migrate (as above).

3) Should be OK, although some preferences are specific to the 'host' and would be at default values.

Great !!
Thanks for your help.