Cloning a MBP 2010 to a MBA 2010, viable?

jmazzamj said:

The title says it all.

I'm planning on cloning the MBP you see in sign to my new MBA, is that possible? Will I experience any issue? My sister will get my MBA in January and as she is totally new to Mac, I DO NOT WANT her to have any issue.

My MBP clone is currently at 10.6.4 and I cannot reclone it, I messed a lot with my machine, that's why I made a clone and NO, i cannot clone it back to my computer (different locations) and go 10.6.5.

Thank you

Click to expand...

If you can't go to 10.6.5 on the clone, then you can't clone it to the MBA. The MBA has a special build of 10.6.4 to make it work. Regular 10.6.4 won't cut it. But since 10.6.5 is newer, it would probably work.

jmazzamj said:

Thanks for your reply.

I know that new Macs have specific Mac OS X build releases but as the MacBook Air did not apparently introduce any new hardware (I don't think its SSD need a specific driver) I just thought that an older clone would work.

Do you think that downloading the 10.6.5 combo update and installing it to my external clone would work?

Thank you again.

Click to expand...

You can clone a drive from your MBP and update the OS on that external drive. You may also want to boot it afterwards and install the latest updates.

Then you could see if the MBA would boot that system. It used to be that a boot disk from one Mac would boot many of the other models, but I'm not sure any more. I recently tried to boot an iMac with a boot disk from a MBP 15 with latest updates and no go.

"I need advice, please!!"

The "advice" is that you CAN'T "clone" the entire contents (system and all) of an older MacBook Pro to a new MacBook Air. Chances are the Air's system software is newer and it won't work.

Just set up the MacBook Air as it comes from Apple.

That's about it.

From my perspective this makes no sense. My MBA came out of the box nicely optimized. I find if especially fast, fun & stable. Why mess with it?

If we were talking about a PC laptop, I'd agree. But Macs are ready to go immediately.

The only reason to re-image that makes sense to me would be in a corporate or other specialized setting.

jmazzamj said:

The title says it all.
I'm planning on cloning the MBP you see in sign to my new MBA, is that possible? Will I experience any issue? My sister will get my MBA in January and as she is totally new to Mac, I DO NOT WANT her to have any issue.
My MBP clone is currently at 10.6.4 and I cannot reclone it, I messed a lot with my machine, that's why I made a clone and NO, i cannot clone it back to my computer (different locations) and go 10.6.5.
Thank you

Click to expand...

First, no a clone won't work, because the hardware is different.
2nd, you do not need to "clone" anyway. Just connect the MBP or the cloned HD and use the Migration Assistant utility to transfer all of your settings and applications etc. to the new MBA.
The original system will ask if you want to transfer your data from another volume when you turn the machine on the first time, so make sure the cloned HD or MBP (target disk mode) is connected to the MBA, and it should work fine.

davidlv said:

2nd, you do not need to "clone" anyway. Just connect the MBP or the cloned HD and use the Migration Assistant utility to transfer all of your settings and applications etc. to the new MBA.

Click to expand...

I did Migration Assistant - it worked fine. The only thing I needed to change so far was my ssh keys... (But that's only if you're using SSH)