Mac "Transplant"?

MTWest

MTWest

MTWest

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27 Sep 2007
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Not sure if this has been asked before, sorry if it has... tried to search for it but nothing came up.

I'm on a MBP at the moment, but say if I were to get a Mac Pro in the future, would it be possible to effectively transplant what I have on the MBP to the Mac Pro? Are there any tools that can help with this... either Apple or otherwise? It's not so much transferring files but rather all my installed programs... I think some of the shareware I have doesn't really allow for another install (or I could be wrong).

I think the idea of also just continuing on with how things were on the previous machine would make life a bit easier too. Is it doable? Thanks.
 
You could make an image in Disk Utility and just copy it over.

You could use Time Machine, and restore the Time Machine onto the new machine.

Or you could connect the two machines together with firewire and use it in target disk mode to copy everything over.
 
Generally I always find it much nicer (although a bit of a pain) to just start fresh, install Apps from scratch and copy your documents and files over either using a firewire cable and target disk mode or just straight over the LAN.

Apple do also have a system migration app but I've never used it myself, as far as I know its an option during the initial setup phase of a new instal and you just need a firewire cable to connect the two machines.
 
I used to do this all the time. I'd simply take the disk out of one, say a G3 iMac, and pop it into the new machine even if it was a different architecture, say a dual G4 PowerMac. Of course you can't do this between PPC and Intel Macs but I'm pretty darned a straight disk image from your laptop to the Pro would work without nary a hiccup. All the drivers are already in the kernel as they should be.

The worst case scenario is that you waste 20 minutes imaging the drives.

It'd be best if the filesystem wasn't active when you're reading it to make the initial image, so if I were you I'd boot off the install disk and use the Disk Utility in that. You'll want another hard disk or partition so you can write the image there.
 
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That would have been the option to back up from Time Machine.

And yeah, you can sync settings and keychains, but not applications etc. You need MobileMe for that.
 
Sorry to hijack, but I have a related question. Thinking of taking my MBP to an Apple Store for a minor keyboard fault (hardware related). They advise you backup your stuff first (or they can help you do it, in store).

On my machine I have the following I wish to preserve:

1) Music folder and iTunes config
2) Other Pictures/docs
3) OS X applications/settings (Mail, Safari, System Preferences)
4) few third party apps and their settings.
5) Boot Camp partition

In my Windows days, I would have Norton Ghosted tHE whole thing to a removable media and then blasTed that image back when machine was returned to me (even if no software was touched by anyone during repair)

What is my equivalent backup in OS X going to be? Will Time Machine work? My MBP has a 200GB HDD (20GB BC rest OS X).

I have a 250GB external HDD (I assume it would have to be formatted to an OS X Filesystem before I could time machine it?) Also I have an Ethernet NAS solution with space, but that has it's own proprietry Linux Filesystm.

I am a bit concerned as I have some > 4gb flat files on the machine, which would not normally be copyable to the NAS (filesystem limit) or the external FAT32 drive.


rp2000
 
MTWest said:
would it be possible to effectively transplant what I have on the MBP to the Mac Pro? Are there any tools that can help with this... either Apple or otherwise? It's not so much transferring files but rather all my installed programs... I think some of the shareware I have doesn't really allow for another install (or I could be wrong).
Click to expand...

Migration assistant will do this, it is supplied by Apple and comes with every Mac so as long as both your Macs can see each other either over the network or something like target disk mode then it will do what you want.
 
rp2000 said:
In my Windows days, I would have Norton Ghosted tHE whole thing to a removable media and then blasTed that image back when machine was returned to me (even if no software was touched by anyone during repair)
Click to expand...

SuperDuper!

Blat the whole thing to a disk, send it off, when it comes blat the whole thing back. When it comes back you can even boot from the disk you copied to!
 
ok well one way would be 2 take the hhd out of the mbp and stick it in the mac pro

or u can use migration tool witch is an apple tool witch will clone your mac to your new one

this will copy every thing even stuff like auto log ins and stuff it will work the same as if u where on the same mac
 
Do I need to worry about driver incompatabilities since I'm moving to a different product? Or does OS X cover everything...?
 
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