restoring clone to migrate to new computer

[rt1027]

My wife has an Intel iMac which has been cloned w/ SD and is planning to purchase a new iMac w/ faster CPU, larger hard drive, more RAM.

Can I simply restore the clone of her existing iMac to the new iMac in order to migrate everything over?

[dnanian]

No. In general, you should -- when first prompted to 'copy from another Mac' -- point that at either the orginal Mac or a full SuperDuper! backup.

[rt1027]

Thanks Dave. So what you are saying is to either:

1. have the original iMac connected to the new one w/ a firewire cable and when it prompts me to " copy from another mac" select the original iMac and migrate from there

or

2. when asked to "copy from another mac" point it to the original iMacs full SD clone

What prompts the "copy from another" option?

[dnanian]

Yes - and that prompt appears during your first startup (when you get a new Mac, or during the first restart after you clean install OS X). Don't run the Migration Assistant manually!

[DeathtoToasters]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Yes - and that prompt appears during your first startup (when you get a new Mac, or during the first restart after you clean install OS X). Don't run the Migration Assistant manually!

Why not run it manually?

What if we already did the initial setup so the new MBP is already setup in the basic way BUT it bare bones and we need to get everything over from the old to the new?

[dnanian]

The big problem is that your user account is likely to have a different low-level ID (UID) when imported after this point. You'll see a lot of users encoutering difficulty with this particular situation all over the web... it's best to avoid that situation!