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How to move a Filevault-ed user to a new machine

L

lonepilgrim

macrumors regular
Original poster
What's the easiest way to move a user account, which is Filevaulted, to a new machine?

I'm moving from the previous-gen (2.16) C2D 15.4" MacBook Pro to the newest (2.2). Can I just transfer the disk image via an external hard drive straight onto the new machine? Will that work, or should I copy real folders over? I've never really understand how the ~/Library folder(s) are related to the overall system installation, and whether it would cause problems if moved straight into a new system.

Thanks in advance for any advice 🙂
 
Mate, just remove FileVault. Although it's possible to simply drag the relevant components of the Home folder from the old machine to the new one, using FileVault is just asking for trouble. 😱
 
mad jew said:
Mate, just remove FileVault. Although it's possible to simply drag the relevant components of the Home folder from the old machine to the new one, using FileVault is just asking for trouble. 😱
Click to expand...
I've been happily using FileVault for over a year with no problems. After having my previous laptop stolen, I appreciate the peace of mind having my drive encrypted, since I take it everywhere with me. And all the folders are always backed up.... and I've been presuming that restoring the folders really is simply a matter of dragging them back on top of a newly-created user. This chimes with what you're saying.

So a user's Library folder, for instance, doesn't interact in any particularly special ways with System things - it won't matter that the OS installation "underneath", or the machine itself, is different?
 
for every person who says they've had no problems, there's ones like me who lost a lot of data because of file vault. If that laptop ever has problems and you can't boot it up AND you are not fully backed-up, you will lose that data; it is lost to the encrypted place and whatever dark deeds go on there.
Unless there is very sensitive information on there, I'd recommend against using it. For the sensitive info you can always use encrypted dmgs - mentioned just a second after I posted this, oddly enough.
 
iBlue said:
for every person who says they've had no problems, there's ones like me who lost a lot of data because of file vault. If that laptop ever has problems and you can't boot it up AND you are not fully backed-up, you will lose that data; it is lost to the encrypted place and whatever dark deeds go on there.
Unless there is very sensitive information on there, I'd recommend against using it. For the sensitive info you can always use encrypted folders without using file vault at all.
Click to expand...
I personally don't see the difference between losing data to a corrupted disk image, or losing it to theft or even just a broken drive. Whatever happens, it's a problem if your data is not backed up. My data is backed up folder-by-folder onto an external hard drive, Apple Backup shifts things onto my iDisk and a series of DVDs (kept off-site), and I manually copy the most important folders onto my iDisk.

I'm just wondering, double-checking really because I've never had to do it, how to move a whole user from one machine to another, which I guess would be the same question as if I had to restore from my backups.
 
Okay, well you've been warned but you make a valid point about backups. Just to confirm, yeah, the user folders are independent of the OS so transferring them component-by-component between machines is generally fine. 🙂
 
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