My pal just dropped off his new Retina MBP and his old 2008 MBP, and he wants me to migrate his old to new. What's the best way to do that? I know I can clone the machine using CCC, but thinking why take his fresh install and put 4 years of crud on the new box. But on the other hand, I don't know where all his data is, and he is not sure either. I have a TM & clone of the old drive to work with, so what would you do?
thx!
The first time you boot the new Mac, in setup Assistant choose to migrate from his MBP. Use thunderbolt if avaialble on both. The Setrup Assistant will walk you through the migration. You will have a good choice of what to migrate, you don't need to know where it is. But if you don't do on the first boot Migration tends to create another Home folder, which isn't a good thing.
EDIT: you can do the same from an external drive, if you don't have the machine itself. IMO I'd use the clone to migrate from, but it shouldn't matter.
thx, but here is the rub. My pal already setup the new Retina, started using it, then realized he wanted to have all of his stuff from the old computer on the new. The old computer shortname is username {space} 1 so that's already a problem I am dealing with on the old box. My plan was/is to get that fixed and just use CCC to clone it.
He would have to live with the garbage, as I think it's unreasonalbe to expect me to sort that out.
so what to do now? I can't change the shortname/home folder name on the old computer because of the space? When I use the KB http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428 it does not work. A new home folder is created instead of renameing the old one, even though I am logged in as root. huh?!?
thx again!
coocooforcocoapuffs wrote:
My plan was/is to get that fixed and just use CCC to clone it.
Yes, but cloning would not leave the newer software on his disk...
You can easily Migrate his apps, leaving the neweer ones alone (migation will not replace new apps with older ones). So the only issue is really his own data which can be dragged.
Or, as I said, use the /Shared folder to do the moving.
Yes, but cloning would not leave the newer software on his disk...
The software levels of the old machine and new machine are the same, not a problem - 10.8.2
(12C60) I trust CCC and not much else...
I just need to change the old machine's shortusername / home folder that has the space in it, and I will be happy (so will my pal).
Is the user short name interfering with his system?
If not, then clone.
EDIT: Or try through root user
Well, the shortname is not interfering, just my pal requested the change. I don't think he wants his real name there, or something like that. The ehow article is just a rehash of https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3872, and does not work if you have a space in the shortname.
Step 4: Rename your "Home" folder. Your new short name should be all letters in lowercase with no spaces.
That dunna work. OSX will create a copy of the folder and leave the old one - apparently you can not rename the folder with a space in the name, even logged in as root. I could try then deleting the old one with the space, but that's sure to jack things up (my guess).
Best way to migrate data & apps (if possible) to new Retina
