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richjohnson2013
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Q: Can you migrate from a MBP running Mavericks to a new MBP running Mountain Lion using Setup Assistant?

I have acquired a new MBP installed with Mountain Lion (the previous model to the new entry level MBP). My MBP is installed with Mavericks. I've backed that up in Time Machine but the new MBP cannot detect it in the "Select the source" stage of Setup Assistant. Is this to do with me trying to migrate data from a Mavericks machine TO a Mountain Lion machine?

MacBook Pro, iOS 7.0.4

Posted on Dec 12, 2013 12:26 PM

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richjohnson2013

Q: Can you migrate from a MBP running Mavericks to a new MBP running Mountain Lion using Setup Assistant?

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  • by hands4,

    hands4 hands4 Dec 12, 2013 12:43 PM in response to richjohnson2013
    Level 4 (2,227 points)
    Dec 12, 2013 12:43 PM in response to richjohnson2013

    Is there a reason you want to run ML on the newly acquired MBP?  Why not upgrade it to Mavericks before transferring the data?  Now is a good opportunity to do that.

  • by richjohnson2013,

    richjohnson2013 richjohnson2013 Dec 12, 2013 1:00 PM in response to hands4
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 12, 2013 1:00 PM in response to hands4

    I intend to upgrade the new machine to ML.  But I know that transfers through Setup Assistant seem to work better than later Migration Assistant transfers which is what I'd have to do if I first installed Mavericks and then transferred the data.

     

    Hence my Q - does the new machine need Mavericks on before it will detect a Time Machine backup from a Mavericks machine?

  • by GeekBoy.from.Illinois,

    GeekBoy.from.Illinois GeekBoy.from.Illinois Dec 12, 2013 1:41 PM in response to richjohnson2013
    Level 4 (2,809 points)
    Dec 12, 2013 1:41 PM in response to richjohnson2013

    Generally speaking, MacOS is much like iOS in this case.  You can migrate an older OS to a newer one, but you can't generally migrate a newer OS to an older one.