moving data and programs to a new iMac

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Level 1

5 points

moving data and programs to a new iMac

My first gen Intel 20" iMac core duo quit the other day (bad logic board).I just ordered a new one on Amazon since the repair cost was $900.

So my question is, can I just take the hard drive out stick it in a firewire enclosure boot from it and use super duper to copy over the whole OS to the internal drive or will I run into problems since the hardware is different? Or would it be better to try and restore from my time machine backup ?

I was running the latest version of OSX.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Dec 21, 2010 8:53 PM

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Answer 1

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,364 points

Dec 21, 2010 8:58 PM in response to Jayster68

What you can do is put the old drive into an old drive and when you get the new machine use Setup Assistant to move over everything to the new machine. I'd recommend against cloning the old drive to the new drive as the new machine probably won't run.

Read up on Pondini's instructions on Setup Assistant and I think it will give you some pretty good insight.

http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/SetupAsst.html

http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Setup.html

Roger

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Answer 2

TeenTitan

Level 4

2,640 points

Dec 21, 2010 9:32 PM in response to Jayster68

HI Jayster,

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1159?viewlocale=en_US lists the OS builds shipped with the intel apple computers. The current imacs use OS Builds 10D2322a to 10F2108. The original 20" core duo uses an earlier build; and such cloning the drive would most likely cause issues.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2186 explains in more detail.
"If you install an earlier (previous) version of the Mac OS X than what was included, your computer may exhibit unexpected behavior such as:

The trackpad or mouse may not respond properly
The computer may stop responding
Sleep/wake issues may occur
The display image may appear to "shrink" with black bars around it, may appear tinted, or have other issues
Loss of built-in audio
Loss of Bluetooth or AirPort functionality
May not start up past the Apple logo"

If your time machine back up is up to date. The least amount of work, would be to use Migration Assistant to migrate your time machine back up to the new computer.

You could also use Migration Assistant with the original hard drive in a external enclosure. Migration assistant would take less time to migrate the data. But taking the computer apart sounds like a huge pain.
Did you try using disk mode? It's allot easer then taking the computer apart.

I hope the links answer all your questions.

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Answer 3

Jayster68 Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 21, 2010 10:51 PM in response to TeenTitan

Disk mode isn't going to work since the computer turns on and just makes the start up sound over and over again and wont do much else. Thanks for the answers, I will try the migration assistant, I'm going to pull the hard drive any way as I don't want to toss it with so much personal data on it.

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Answer 4

TeenTitan

Level 4

2,640 points

Dec 22, 2010 11:08 AM in response to Jayster68

Glad I could help; but I'm sorry about your computer.

I assume you tried a SMC and NVRAM reset, as well trying to change the ram configuration? (if there are two ram sticks, trying one ram stick. if there is one ram stick trying the ram stick in the other ram slot)
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964 SMC reset
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379 NVRAM reset

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