SD Instead of Migration Assistant

[YnotMe]

Hi,
I'm about to sell my MBP and hate the thought of having to reinstall all my wares on my new machine (another MBP). When I went from my PB to my MBP I used Migration Assistant and ended up with nothing but bugs and had to install everything over again, so I vowed to never go that route again.

If I were to use SD and clone my HDD to a FW Lacie will I still end up with bugs? Is it easy with SD to overwrite a drive with that clone?

Thanks for any help

[s411ing]

Dave's out travelling and will not be able to respond as quickly as he usually does.

I believe such a transition would be handled pretty smoothly by SuperDuper!:

Step 1: clone your old MBP's drive onto the LaCie drive
Step 2: plug your LaCie drive into the new MBP and boot from it; Launch SuperDuper!
Step 3: clone the LaCie drive onto the new MBP's internal drive and set the internal drive as your boot device.

I'm sure Dave would have put this more eloquently, but I hope this helps.

Best.
--
Jonas

Originally Posted by YnotMe

Hi,
I'm about to sell my MBP and hate the thought of having to reinstall all my wares on my new machine (another MBP). When I went from my PB to my MBP I used Migration Assistant and ended up with nothing but bugs and had to install everything over again, so I vowed to never go that route again.

If I were to use SD and clone my HDD to a FW Lacie will I still end up with bugs? Is it easy with SD to overwrite a drive with that clone?

Thanks for any help

[dnanian]

Jonas has it exactly right. Note, though, that the OS that you're going to copy from must work with the Mac you're copying to. If it's a brand new Mac, check to see if it's running the same build of OSX as you're running, or an earlier, or it's not going to work...

[transco]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Jonas has it exactly right. Note, though, that the OS that you're going to copy from must work with the Mac you're copying to. If it's a brand new Mac, check to see if it's running the same build of OSX as you're running, or an earlier, or it's not going to work...

My new Intel iMac arrives tomorrow and I'd very much like to use SD to migrate files from my old Intel iMac. Based on what I've read here, if I make sure that the backup of the existing machine and the new machine are the same rev. It should work. Further, I have Parallels VM on the old machine and again, from what I read that should transfer correctly. The HD in the new machine is larger than the one in the old computer (750GB vs. 500GB). From my limited understanding of how SD works this shouldn't be a problem... correct? I just wanted to double check. I've never had any luck with Migration Assistant so SD is my only option. Anything I should watch out for? I'd sure hate to screw up my new computer before I have a chance to use it.

[dnanian]

NO: don't use SD! to do this migration. Use the migration assistant first and then, if you have a problem, you can try SD.

[transco]

Originally Posted by dnanian

NO: don't use SD! to do this migration. Use the migration assistant first and then, if you have a problem, you can try SD.

Well Dave, as predicted Migration Assistant hosed my new machine. After it was finished, the computer would no longer boot. I then tried SD and it worked like a charm. Going by the number of files SD had to copy, it appears that Migration Assistant did little more than trash the computer. Anyway Dave, thanks to you and SD I was up and running in a few hours.

[dnanian]

I honestly don't know how Migration Assistant -- which doesn't bring in OS files -- could cause the Mac to be unbootable: that's just plain weird. But I'm glad you got it done with SD...