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poflynn Author

Level 4

1,303 points

Importing Home Folder after new hard drive and Lion Update

(Okay, long title.)

Had to replace my hard drive. Was running Tiger.

Backed up my entire Home Folder only, on an external harddrive, before it failed completely.

Hard drive replaced, and then loaded Snow Leopard, updated to latest version, 10.6.8.

Ready now to get Lion.

Questions:

- After I install Lion do I simply use the "Transfer Information to This Mac" feature to bring in my Home folder?

- What about the apps that are duplicated, such as Mail, Safari, iCal, etc. Will that be taken care of on its own?

- What about the iLife apps, GarageBand, iPhoto, etc.? Will I be able to update those to the latest versions?

Thank you.

iMac7,1 2.4 GHz; 2GB, Mac OS X (10.4.11), Tiger iLife '08 Alesis IO|14 FW Interface

Posted on May 5, 2012 11:14 AM

17 replies

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

May 6, 2012 6:51 PM in response to poflynn

Things work simpler in SL. If you're successful in it, you can then clone and install Lion. If not, you work on it until it is. No Internet required to reinstall.

poflynn Author

Level 4

1,303 points

Jun 5, 2012 6:38 PM in response to baltwo

Okay, so here's what really worked. All of the offered advice, although much appreciated, was not it.

I finally went to an Apple store Genius and here's the solution, which worked like a charm.

- In SysPrefs create a new User acct with a different name than the current one or the old one being moved in. This will be later deleted so call it Temp if you like. Give it Admin rights.

- Log out of the current account and log in to the temp one just created.

- Delete the current User account you just logged out of.

- Drag the old home folder into the Users folder. (In my case this folder had the same name as the new current Home folder. That's why I had to delete the current one. If I had tried to drag the old one to Users there would be much confusion.)

- Now again in SysPrefs create another new Account with the same name as the old folder you just dragged in. When it tells you that a folder with that name already exists and asks if you want to use it as the Home folder, say YES.

- Make sure to give this new account Admin rights.

- Now log out, log in to the new account and delete the temp account. You will now have all your preferences, etc just like it was before.

I believe I've remembered it correctly.

So easy when you know how. Thanks Apple Genius.

Importing Home Folder after new hard drive and Lion Update