Restoring to Dissimilar Hardware Possible (Mac Pro to Macbook Pro)?

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Level 1

1 points

Restoring to Dissimilar Hardware Possible (Mac Pro to Macbook Pro)?

My main system is an 8 core Mac Pro. I have a Time Machine External FW Drive and a internal clone of the Boot drive for this system.

I mainly use my computer as an audio workstation so there are a lot of things installed on my system.

When I bought a new i7 Macbook Pro I somehow restored the system with the OS from my Mac Pro which was running 10.6.3. I I think my system came with 10.6.3 but I remember Apple told me that I could only restore to dissimilar hardware if my new computer was shipped running an earlier OS that I would be restoring with Time Machine so maybe it was 10.6.2...

Regardless, I think I booted to the DVD that came with my Macbook Pro and selected Restore from a Time Machine Backup. Then afterwards I somehow updated my drivers (but I am not sure how I did this). I think I booted to DVD again and unchecked all installation options except running the system software, then I may have updated the OS with Software Update. I really dont remember the exact steps so I may be wrong here.

Anyways, the problem is that I am in a situation where I need to restore again because the 10.6.6 update somehow corrupted my Macbook Pro. There were errors during the update and my computer would kernel panic after a few minutes of being on. I have found some other people posting a similar issue.

So I am trying to do another Macbook Pro Restore with my Mac Pro's OS. However I updated my 8 Core Mac Pro to 10.6.5 and when I tried restoring from one of those TM backups I got a message that said "this backup is for another computer and I cannot restore to it".

When I called apple they told me that I could not restore from Time Machine this way and I needed to use Disk Utility to clone the Mac Pro's Boot drive to the Mac Book Pro in Target disk mode and then try reinstalling the system software from the DVD to install drivers (before doing this last step my system kernel panic'd).

I tried this and my system worked except for Logic. Some of my 3rd party plugins were not functioning correctly and full uninstallation and reinstallation's of those plugins would not fix this issue. I have no idea what went wrong, but maybe the issue was that the Mac Pro I cloned was now running 10.6.5 and there were some new restrictions added.

So I am in the process of cloning my Mac Pro's clone backup with Drive Genius (the clone is running 10.6.3) to see if I have more luck restoring this image to the Macbook Pros boot drive.

My question is, am I approaching this situation correctly? Is there a better way to restore from dissimilar hardware? I am ultimately trying to save time as since this is a secondary system it will likely take me weeks to get it working as it should (with all of the installations, updates, and authorizations, etc of 3rd party software). I did this once before any everything was perfect until the update failed on me. Can someone help me clear this up?

8 Core Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.5), 13 Gigs of RAM

Posted on Jan 25, 2011 10:19 PM

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Answer 1

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jan 26, 2011 8:49 AM in response to drwebmail

drwebmail wrote:
. . .
My question is, am I approaching this situation correctly?

No, sorry.

Is there a better way to restore from dissimilar hardware?

No, that's not advised at all. It will work, sometimes, to a degree, but isn't recommended. See: [Mac OS X v10.6: Issues after restoring a Mac from a Time Machine backup made with a different Mac|http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3243]. The fix is to install OSX from the Install disc that came with the Mac in question, as AppleCare had you do.

As it says, the better way is to erase your OSX volume, install OSX, then use +Setup Assistant+ to transfer your stuff.

That does present some other problems; both +Setup Assistant+ and +Migration Assistant+ automatically use the most recent backup, so you can't select an earlier one.

That process also may not copy all the support files for some complex applications that put them in odd places. See: [Transferring Applications|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/TransferApps.html].

Your best bet for the future is to back up each Mac separately; and when setting-up a new one, use +Setup Assistant,+ per [Setting up a new Mac from an old one or its backups|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/Setup.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Snow Leopard > Installation and Setup+ forum).

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Answer 2

drwebmail Author

Level 1

1 points

Jan 26, 2011 11:53 AM in response to Pondini

I appreciate all of the information and it is very useful, but what I mean when I ask if I am approaching this situation correctly, I mean relative to what I want to accomplish.

Other OS's (with the help of 3rd party software) allow bare metal restore, from dissimilar hardware, etc. Acronis works great, I've done it many times. A simple driver disk is all that is needed and Acronis creates that disk for you.

I dont want to reinstall the OS, or use the Setup or Migration Assistant, because I will likely have to reinstall hundreds of plugins and deal with incompatibilities and more wasted time. Maybe I am wrong about Migration Assistant as I dont have the experience with it, but because this is a secondary portable system for me, I need to get this up and running as quickly as possible.

The bottom line is, I finished cloning the disk from my main system to my macbook pro in Target Disk Mode, rebooted to the grey DVD, and reloaded the system software. I was asked to find "system events.app" which I did and then I repaired the permissions in my plugin components folder to root admin. Thusfar, my system seems great and exhibits none of the issues after the previous restore from my 10.6.5 main system.

So I guess I am now trying to figure out what went wrong so I know how to deal with this issue if it happens again. It was the 10.6.6 combo update that put me in this situation. It seems that by restoring the OS to 10.6.3 (from the grey DVD) after cloning my 10.6.5 system, and then updating with the combo updater, something went wrong. Maybe I can get a Snow Leopard disk with 10.6.5 on it when I load the system software?

I know this type of restore is not the Apple Care supported process, but it does work if done properly.
I just would like to nail down what the right and wrong way is for this unsupported process.

Can anyone shed some light here?

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Answer 3

Jan 26, 2011 1:22 PM in response to drwebmail

I'm not really sure what the problem is. Reinstalling the OS without messing with anything in the user side of things is pretty straightforward and easy.

Step One -- Insert the 10.6 install DVD into the MBP. If the MBP is not too hosed, it will detect that the version you already have on the MBP is a later version, and offer you options to archive and install and erase and install. Choose "archive and install" and let it complete.

Step Two -- When it reboots, log in, run Software Update, and get yourself to the version of the OS you want to be at. (If you want 10.6.6, just install from software update. If you want 10.6.5, go to support.apple.com/downloads and download the 10.6.5 combo updater and double-click on it to upgrade to where you want to be.) Do not select any of the other updates until you have the OS at the version you want.

Step Three -- When it reboots, log in and look around. If everything seems A-OK, you are fine. Run Software Update to get all of the rest of your software to its current versions. If things are still messed up, go to /Applications/utilities/MigrationAssistant. If you have a TimeMachine backup, you can restore your accounts, settings and utilities from it. If you want to use your Mac Pro as the source for your restore, then boot it into target disk mode and hook it up to the macbook pro.

If things are really bad, you might have to go back to the macbook and do an "erase and install" from the DVD's, and then it will automatically run SetupAssistant on restart. Then you can plug in a TimeMachine backup or plug in the Mac-Pro-booted-into-target-disk-mode as the source for your setup.

If there are any machine-specific tweaks necessary, then the the Installer, SetupAssistant and MigrationAssistant are the tools that Apple has provided to get those right. I've done this a dozen times, in fact did one this morning when a hard drive crashed. Pretty much every time it was between wildly dissimilar macs running different operating systems, too. Every time it "just worked" -- really nice when you are talking production machines that need to be back on line ASAP.

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