Clone to new MAC

[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.