How to migrate from Leopard to Lion?

Why didn't you use Migration Assistant? It does the job automatically. I've used it numerous times and it has always worked perfectly.

Lion Migration assistant will not import anything from Leopard. "Upgrade to Snow Leopard" you say? That would be a great idea - if the Leopard mac that was backed up still worked. About a month ago it died, so I encouraged my friend who owns the macbook to just wait a month for Lion. "Everything will be easier with Lion" I said.

I'm probably going to have to create a Snow Leopard bootable external HD, boot to it, migrade assist that stupid Leopard HD into it, then migrate assiste the Snow Leopard external HD into Lion.

Way to go Apple.

Magic Feather wrote:

Lion Migration assistant will not import anything from Leopard.

Not so. It won't migrate via network, but will via Firewire, or Time Machine or "clone" backups on an external HD.

Setup Assistant is better, as it avoids some problems you may have with Migration Assistant.

See Using Setup Assistant on Lion

I don't think you're getting what I'm saying. We have an external time machine backup on a USB hard drive of a Leopard system. Although it shows up in Finder and you can go though it no problem, setup and migration assistant do no see the drive.

There are many forums indicating that only 10.6.8 time machine backups will work with Lion's migration and setup assistant. I'm not making it up 🙂.

Interesting. I really need to know if this is the case, or perhaps your Time Machine backup is corrupt...

I've got a Time Machine backup made on Leopard 10.5.8 and have a new Lion iMac coming next week... How will I get everything across!!!?

Pondini, do you speak from experience or just assume? I guess I'll find out for myself soon enough!

That does work (if the backups are complete and not damaged). I did it several times during testing, including on the released version of Lion. I'm not making it up, either.

First, did you exclude System folders from being backed-up? If so, no, you may not be able to migrate from an incomplete system.

Second, are you sure they're not recognized? They will appear with either a yellow or green icon, and show the name of the Computer and drive that was backed-up, not the drive the backups are on. And be sure to select From Time Machine or other disk, not From another Mac.

If they really don't appear, try repairing them, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting

Ah, I suck. It does work - I was looking for the migration assistant to name the time machine backup drive, not the drive being backed up. You are correct. Lion from Leopard works.

Thanks!

Gee, you mean it's not intuitive? 😉

Trust me, you are far from the first . . .

Even worse, if you try it directly from another Mac via Firewire, you don't select From another Mac; you have to select From Time Machine or other disk.

That actually makes some sense; when you start the old Mac in Firewire Target Disk mode, it looks like an external HD to the new one. On previous versions of OSX, when you select From another Mac, there's a Connect window where you can select either network or firewire, but Apple dropped it from Lion. 😕

I just found a way to do so.

1) Purchase a firewire cable.

2) Hold the T button down, and start up your new mac. You should see the firewire logo on the screen of your old mac.

3) Connect the two computers to each other via firewire.

3) Using migration assistant on your Lion, select transfer from a Time Machine backup or other disk.

You should be able to migrate from there easily.

Hope this helps!

Silas

Nice answers Pondini and thanks

In the end I updated the source m/c OS (Leopard) and connected to new m/c( Lion) by Ethernet cable.

Ran Migration assistant but the whirlygigs went on and on looking for each other.

In desperation clicked Continue on Lion and it came up with a pairing code for Source m/c to match. If I hadnt hit Continue it would have whirled all night.

Voila.

Full transfer in 4 hrs even though I had to change my user name not to conflict

How to Install Mountain Lion Over Leopard

and

How To: Install Mac OS X Lion 10.7 Over Leopard (Updating Directly From Leopard To Lion)