[Simon]

The new PowerMac G5s come with a new OS X installer feature. When you boot it asks you if you want to migrate old stuff from another Mac.

For details, take a look at this page.

I guess it's a great idea that makes getting a new Mac a much simpler process, but still keeps the new system clean. The UI looks rather simple. It would be nice however if it would give you more information on what will be copied and if it would allow you to manually select and deselect certain files/folders.

[tRr]

I think it's a fantastic feature! I had a guy just ask me how he should transfer his files over to a new G5 he just ordered last week!

I typed up some simple instructions on just copying over the preferences and documents he'd like to keep, but does anyone know of any 3rd party program that can do something similar to what Apple has done here?

Thanks

[Simon]

Originally posted by tRr:
I typed up some simple instructions on just copying over the preferences and documents he'd like to keep, but does anyone know of any 3rd party program that can do something similar to what Apple has done here?

Carbon Copy Cloner is not exactly the same but you could make a clone of your old Mac's disk on the new Mac's disk.

[The Placid Casual]

Nice forward thinking by Apple...

I suspect that Apple picked 'now' as the time to introduce the feature as people are increasing going from OS X to OS X machines not OS 9 to OS X...

[gorickey]

I can't wait to see this in person...sounds very promising to say the least...

[mitchell_pgh]

Now if they only did the same thing for Windows users (minus the Application stuff).

I hear if you are a switcher, you can bring in your WinTel box and the Mac Genius will transfer all of your PC files over to your new Mac.

GREAT IDEA!

[t_hah]

After going through a few Mac I can definitely see how this can be very useful. Of course with OSX it is not very hard to just back up my home directory and copy it over, but this also helps with the apps, which might help a little more.

Great idea!

[Big Mac]

Nice find! It's good to know Apple has finally implemented a long overdue feature; I hope it provides a log so one can see what it does behind the scenes.

[Brass]

Originally posted by Simon:
The new PowerMac G5s come with a new OS X installer feature. When you boot it asks you if you want to migrate old stuff from another Mac.

being a bit pedantic here, but... I don't think it's a feature of the installer, but of the Setup Assistant that runs on every new Mac the first time you boot (and which you can run manually at other times if you know where to look).

[tooki]

Originally posted by Simon:
Carbon Copy Cloner is not exactly the same but you could make a clone of your old Mac's disk on the new Mac's disk.

Carbon Copy Cloner is a largely deprecated utility, now that Apple provides disk cloning functionality right in Apple Software Restore and Disk Utility. It's easy: boot either Mac from a Panther install disc, put the other Mac in Target Disk Mode, connect them, launch Disk Utility, click any disk on the left, then click the Restore tab, and then drag the source disk to the source field, and the destination disk to the destination field, press Restore, and off it goes.

I wonder if Apple's utility is smart enough to mention that some FireWire Macs (the blue G3 and "Yikes!" G4) cannot do Target Disk Mode?

tooki

[magicbbird]

I have a question...
I just ordered a Rev. A Dual 2.0G PM, and want to transfer all my settings/email/itune songs/bookmark/etc. to the new Mac.

I have read suggestion using CCC to clone disk, but I wonder why I need to clone an old disk image onto a new machine? I rather leave the new drive alone.

For me, I am willing to re-install all the apps, just don't want to drag-drop folders after folders or retype all the email accounts, network or bookmark settings.

I am a recent switcher and this is the first time I need to upgrade to a new machine.

Please kindly give me a hand. Or if there is/are detail instruction already available pls kindly point me there.

Thanks.

[Simon]

Originally posted by tooki:
Carbon Copy Cloner is a largely deprecated utility, now that Apple provides disk cloning functionality right in Apple Software Restore and Disk Utility.

CCC is nowhere near deprecated because Apple's SR sucks big time.

[turtle777]

Originally posted by Simon:
Carbon Copy Cloner is not exactly the same but you could make a clone of your old Mac's disk on the new Mac's disk.

But you should be careful about what version of OS X your are cloning to the new G5. It might not run with older OS X versions.
Sometimes, Apple even preloads new models with a newer built than available to public. So watch out !

-t

[magicbbird]

That is what I am thinking. Therefore, pls share what is the safe way to transfer internet/email/network, etc. setting from an old Mac to a new Mac. I think mainly just copying the old files in the library/ folder to the same location on the new machine, is it right?

Thanks.

p.s. YES, my Rev. A Dual 2.0G is here!! Just got a firewire, and now anxious to upgrade from my powerbook to the desktop!!

[NordicBastard]

Hmm, 'bout time that the system gives you a migration option. Regardless, I currently use a powerful little utility called MimMac, which allows me much more control over what gets copied -- I highly doubt that Apple's solution will replacing it anytime soon.

[Grrr]

If it isn't a silly question.... Why only G5's?

[tooki]

Originally posted by Simon:
CCC is nowhere near deprecated because Apple's SR sucks big time.

I was just at an Apple-sponsored seminar on the topic of computer cloning, given by an Apple engineer who keeps in contact with the author of CCC. It's deprecated. It's no longer the author's main product, he himself now uses ASR in NetRestore, and CCC is no longer the headline product on his page..

ASR works great. You just need to know how to use it (though its basic functionality is easy and reliable).

tooki

[Simon]

Originally posted by tooki:
ASR works great. You just need to know how to use it (though its basic functionality is easy and reliable).

Baloney.
- It drops errors (-34 and -17) all the time partly because it's to dumb to check if the source disk has enough space
- It doesn't allow you to deselect certain items down the hierarchy of your source
- It doesn't allow you to not clone cache files
- It doesn't render bit-to-bit bootable copies of your source

Hell, it doesn't even have a cancel button to interrupt. It just plain sucks, So don't go around claiming it's worth a nickel just because Apple made it. It's a quick and dirty alibi hack not a real tool.

Wake me when it caters to others than just grandma.

[danrnw]

I don't see either in utilities or applications in 10.3.4.
Are these features in some other Apple system software program?

thanks,
dan

[danrnw]

sorry, the forum didn't post my subject line for above message.
It's "where do I find ASR and NetRestore?

thanks,
dan

[Simon]

Originally posted by danrnw:
I don't see either in utilities or applications in 10.3.4.
Are these features in some other Apple system software program?

CCC is freeware and can be downloaded here.

ASR is part of DiskUtility. Go to /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility, select any disk, and then click on the "Restore" tab at the top right of the window.

[tooki]

Originally posted by Simon:
Baloney.
1 It drops errors (-34 and -17) all the time partly because it's to dumb to check if the source disk has enough space
2 It doesn't allow you to deselect certain items down the hierarchy of your source
3 It doesn't allow you to not clone cache files
4 It doesn't render bit-to-bit bootable copies of your source

Hell, it doesn't even have a cancel button to interrupt. It just plain sucks, So don't go around claiming it's worth a nickel just because Apple made it. It's a quick and dirty alibi hack not a real tool.

Wake me when it caters to others than just grandma.

I'm claiming it's worth more than "a nickel" because I've used it numerous times and it works. (Besides, if you read what I write on these forums, you'd know damned well that I don't support Apple a large part of the time. I don't support their stuff just because they make it, I support their things when I believe they're the best. When there's a better alternative, I use it instead.)

1. I've never run into errors, maybe because I'm always cloning to a blank disk on a similar or identical machine.
2. :shrug: never needed that (the Apple-advised method is to make an image containing everything, and then use scripts to automatically delete the things not needed on certain configurations)
3. that would be nice. The ASR instructions tell you to do this.
4. Nor does CCC -- it uses ditto (which itself is a basic-hack utility, since rsync back then didn't support resource forks). ASR does file copies to create the image, but after "scanning for restore" you can have ASR do block copies, which go MUCH faster.

Might I also point out to you that the command-line ASR has a large number of functions not available through the GUI, and has a lot of features (GUI and CLI) that CCC doesn't offer, like restoring from an image over a network (including an image hosted on an HTTP server). In a lab environment, ASR has more useful features than CCC.

The upshot is, if you want to just copy one Mac to another, then CCC will do a great job. ASR will work fine, too. (For lab management, ASR is markedly superior.)

tooki

[Simon]

Originally posted by tooki:
The upshot is, if you want to just copy one Mac to another, then CCC will do a great job. ASR will work fine, too. (For lab management, ASR is markedly superior.)

What CCC does that ASR can't do is copy a complete OS X partition to a disk and make it bootable. That way I can have multiple backup partitions on an external FW disk and do a regular CCC backup to the oldest partition. That gives me a bootable and complete backup with history.

Until ASR can do this as simply as CCC, CCC can't be called deprecated. And as long as ASR throws seemingly random errors I refuse to use it. Apple can do better than that.

Just because your needs are covered by ASR, doesn't mean it caters to eveybody.

[leperkuhn]

Originally posted by magicbbird:
I have a question...
I just ordered a Rev. A Dual 2.0G PM, and want to transfer all my settings/email/itune songs/bookmark/etc. to the new Mac.

I have read suggestion using CCC to clone disk, but I wonder why I need to clone an old disk image onto a new machine? I rather leave the new drive alone.

For me, I am willing to re-install all the apps, just don't want to drag-drop folders after folders or retype all the email accounts, network or bookmark settings.

I am a recent switcher and this is the first time I need to upgrade to a new machine.

Please kindly give me a hand. Or if there is/are detail instruction already available pls kindly point me there.

Thanks.

I just did this over the weekend. (bought a 250 gig hd). I pretty much just copied my folders over (music, pictures), then found the ones in the ~/Library that I needed, like iApps. I even still have my playlists in itunes.

i should mention I had some problems with some of my iphoto favorites getting corrupted and I had to delete them manually for the copy to work, because os x don't have a "ok and keep going" choice. (it just stops the copy completely)

[spitty27]

the macfixit link is dead. anyone still have access to the pics?

[tooki]

Originally posted by Simon:
What CCC does that ASR can't do is copy a complete OS X partition to a disk and make it bootable.

What are you talking about?!?!? Of course it can do that! I do it all the time at school.

ASR can do copies of entire disks (including the partition table), just individual partitions (both as file- or block-copy), or even just a folder. You can use it the way Apple does to make software distributions with it. And it's on every Panther boot disc, so it's readily available for making cloning one machine directly to another (via FireWire) as well.

ASR-created copies are absolutely bootable.

tooki

[Spliffdaddy]

System Migration

Same thing Windows has called it for years.

Why not iMigrate?

[Simon]

Tooki, sorry, but I tried that once again just shortly before I posted and it didn't work.

Here's the deal: ASR did the copy (and it took much longer than my ditto shell scripts or CCC), but the copy didn't boot, even if I wanted to select it after option-boot it wasn't there. Of course it also didn't show up in the startup disk system pref. I don't know if the copy was screwed or the blessing didn't work, but to me ASR has just appeared as a buggy hack every single time I used it.

[tooki]

For the life of me, I don't know what's going wrong with your setup, then. I've used it to create numerous images for mass-rollout, and I've also used it to do direct machine-to-machine cloning. It's never failed. I've done ATA->disk image, ATA->ATA, FireWire->FireWire, FireWire->ATA, disk image->ATA, and disk image->FireWire, always successfully.

I've never needed to do any separate blessing, either. (No Classic in the images.) Permissions are correct. It all just... works.

tooki