Migrating 3 partitions to new mac with or with Time Machine ?

AFAIK, you can only migrate from one partition at a time. On first boot, use the Setup Assistant to migrate from the OS X bootable partition. That will migrate all your user accounts, settings, and apps. Then, you can create two additional partitions on the new machine and use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to clone the other two to these new partitions. This assumes there's no windoze volume involved. See Pondini's Setup New Mac guide for details.

What's on the three partitions and their formats?

When you get a new Mac your hard drive is going to appear like this

1: EFI partition (invisible)

2: Lion OS X partition (largest)

3: Lion Recovery Partition (smallest, last, invisible)

"Invisble" meaning invisible to Disk Utility

Now your going to want to add two more partitions in addtion to the Lion one.

So your going to have to hold Command R to boot into the Lion Recovery Partition, get online in the upper right hand corner (or Ethernet cable), then use Disk Utility to Erase the Lion Partition and set up your three partitions and their formats.

Then quit Disk Utility and install Lion into one of those partitions and set it as the Startup Disk in System Preferences.

Now depending on what's going into those other paritions depends how you go about it.

superfreud wrote:

I was under the assumtion that creating a partition can not be done on the startup disk as it involves deleting the content of the HD.

In 10.6 and 10.7 Apple allows the creation of one more partition from the OS X one provided there is free space at the bottom of the OS X partition.

You want two more, so that means you have to see IF you can do this by first erasing the Lion Partition and formatting it into three partitions.

When I installed 7 partitions on my Mac, I had to c boot from a Lion install DVD I created from the AppStore download. (you can do it on a Snow Leopard Mac)

http://eggfreckles.net/notes/burning-a-lion-boot-disc/

http://www.yourdailymac.net/2011/06/how-to-create-a-bootable-mac-os-x-lion-insta llation-usb-stick-or-external-hard-drive/

I ended up with 4 bootable partitions (Lion, Snow, Linux and Windows) and one Linux Swap, exFAT data and of course EFI.

No Lion Recovery Partition (or Filevault) was installed with this setup and I think it was because I screwed up early on and had the exFAT last when Lion Recovery likely needed a OS X Extended (Journaled) format as the last partition to carve out a tiny space for itself.

What you should do BEFORE deleting the Lion Partition is first boot into it and make a free Carbon Copy Cloner of it to a blank external OS X Extended (Journaled) formatted drive in Disk Utility first.

This clone is "hold the option key" bootable, so you can then clone that back onto the Lion Partition or erase the entire internal drive, setup your parittions how you like and clone Lion right into one of them. You also can get online just like before and everything is there like normal, just booted off the external drive.

If you erase the entire drive, you can also erase the Lion Recvoery Partition but you can first make a Recovery Disk here first a it uses your present Lion Recvoery Partition to make it.

http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1433

Podini is the TM expert, I'm old school. 🙂

What you can do is if these other two partitions are OS X Extended (Journaled) (aka HFS+), you can T boot the old Mac so it's Firewire Target Disk Mode, the partitons should appear on the desktop of the new Mac and you can simply copy the data.

If the partitions are OS X operating systems then Carbon Copy Cloner.

You still didn't tell us what those other partitions are all about, data? OSX ? Windows? Linux? data sharing? and their format.

superfreud wrote:

I wanna make sure that I'll be able to restore all backed-up partitions using Time Machine and not only my startup partition.

This I don't know I don't use it, it doesn't make sense for TM to backup more than one partition, as a partition is essentially another "drive" to a computer, just that it resides on the same physical piece of hardware.

Far as I know TM only backups up the one OS X partition, just like a clone does.

You can read everything you need to know about TM here

http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html

1 Old System 9 partition that I've been keeping for years. It mostly consists of documents & apps for archiving purposes

1 partition with my iTunes Music

And of course my OS X Lion startup partition

I won't go into the specific as to why I keep my music on a separate partition but it works better for me this way (it is backed up and synced with SugarSync across 4 Macs)

All partitions are HFS+ if I'm not mistaken.

Ok, I'll explain something about the iMac's. Unlike MacBookPro's, MacPro's and even Mini's, you can't get that hard drive out or replace it on your own.

The iMac's have a heat problem, Apple has placed proprietary connectors or something on the drive on newer models that even if you had someone that could open it and replace the drive, the machine won't work. So that means really only Apple can replace that drive, and the prices they charge your likely better off after 3 years getting a new computer. 🙂 Something to think about.

So I understand the reason for perhaps iTunes being on it's own partition, but perhaps you should consider having the System 9 files on a external hard drive instead. And you should be making optional bootable clones of OS X partition, because that might become your new startup drive in the future.

CCC and Superdupes both have scheduling ability, so it can keep the bootable clone updated.

Apple will allow one more partition to be carved out in Disk Utility as long as there is space at the bottom of the OS X partition for it. If you don't want it anymore it's a real snap to get rid of it, no need to erase and repartition the drive like you would need too with three partitions.

This will give you ultimate flexibility and no mind numbing complications with three partitions.

All you have to do is open Disk Utility in Lion, click on the partition tab, click the little plus sign and size the second partition to what you need, then select a HFS+ format for it and click Apply. Simple as pie.

To remove the second partition, all you have to do is click on it, click on the little minus sign and then click on the Lion parittion and use the corner drag thing to reclaim the space and click Apply.

You can play resizing the second partition all you want in case your needs change.

With a triple partition setup, your stuck having to remove everything and resetting up the partitions and returning everything.

So that combined with the fact that if the iMac drive fails, it's going to take your System 9 data with it, and be much more work, I'd say go for the two partitions and a external drive instead.

superfreud wrote:

I'm going to set up my new iMac on my home network with another iMac, a MacBook Pro 2011 13" i7 and a MacBook Air 11" 4Gb/128Gb 2011. I'm looking at making my backup strategy more efficient and less of a hassle.

In my opinion you should have a auto-sync hardware clone for every OS X partition and any data partitions you have, unless the data partitions are synced (like your iTunes) then just two master clones of that, one stored off site.

superfreud wrote:

You did make a point that managing 2 partitions seems a lot easier than three and I think I'm sold on that idea!

It used to be we could manipulate more that two partitions, but Apple put a stop to that.

superfreud wrote:

As for TM, I know for sure that it backs up all partitions associated with a physical drive (I have an iMac with 2 partitions backed up to TM and both partitions show up in TM). I'm just unsure as to the best way to restore the non startup partition.

Well that could be a notch in TM's belt, being able to backup all partitions on a drive, it's also seems to be a curse in a ways in this regard, that it can't be booted from and that all your eggs are in one hardware basket.

People fail to realize that hardware fails just as much as software, they got 4 partitions all on one drive and then they drop the drive and loose everything.

Well I gave you the link, you don't need three partitions anymore, so I'm done here. Can't help you with all the other stuff, I'm a easy one wired clone to one partiton sort of old school fellow.

Post a new question about your TM issue so it gets seen.

🙂

superfreud wrote:

What auto-sync hardware clone would you suggest? External HD & SuperDuper Schedule? I assume this isn't something that TM can do, right?

Yes, TM drives are not hold option bootable like a clone is.

With TM your basically fscked until you get your hard drive replaced and the Lion Recovery Partition installed.

With a clone you can be up in the time it takes to boot and everything is there just like before, especially when your freaking out that your hard drive just died and you got some important stuff to do.

If your out of warranty...you may just run off the clone on desktop machines instead of paying Apple a fortune to replace the hard drive.

Since every machine has different hardware drivers and data, a clone for each machine.

I don't know how the scheduling works on Superdupes, but on CCC it reminds you at the set time to hook up the clone or you can skip it. This is a great feature for laptops to remind one to update it.

But clones only clone one partition, but they are bootable and only need a working port, not a optical drive or a Lion Recovery Partition, disks or anything else working like TM needs.

You should make one of these for each Lion computer you have, it copies your Lion Recovery Partition so you can install it on a replaced storage drive.

http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1433

superfreud wrote:

Thank you again.

As for me, I'm in the same boat than you (one wired clone to one partition guy) but contemplating moving (up or down?) to the TM universe... 😉

Hard drives are cheap, doesn't make any sense to place all your software eggs in one hardware basket.

Some folks mix both a clone and a TM setup so they get the best of both, each have their fine points and drawbacks.

good night. zzzz....