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Restoring laptop from Time Machine version of a different laptop (and windows backup)

M

MarsianMan

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 19, 2007
43
0
I have a Feb 2008 MBP which died and I had some questions about restoring a similar state to a new i5 MBP. I do have the old hard drive (not sure if it works yet) and Time Machine backups.

I was wondering if it is safe to do a complete Time Machine restore because I do not know if any of the files are model specific (and the old laptop does not have the newest version of 10.6.x likely to come on my new MBP). Also, how can I preserve my boot camp partition? Ideally, I would like a slightly bigger boot camp partition on the new laptop, but with an exact clone of the data on the old one. I do know that Time Machine will not restore my Windows partition, so I would appreciate some guidance on that as well.

Thanks!
 
J

jbuk

macrumors regular
Jun 8, 2009
124
0
Get an enclosure with which to mount your old drive.

You can simply copy your documents et cetera verbatim from the old drive. It's best to reinstall applications rather than copying them across, although you may need to find licences etc from the old HDD. If you desperately need to keep your old app preferences, copy across the files from ~/Library/Preferences.

With regards to the bootcamp issue, your best bet is to make a disk image of the windows partition on your old drive, then run the bootcamp utility on your new MBP to create a new (larger) partition, and then restore the disk image onto your new bootcamp partition using disk utility. You might need to install NTFS-3g, Tuxera or similar to achieve this last step, I'm not sure.

Oh, and Windows will probably need reactivating.


Alternatively on the Mac side, you could use Migration Assistant. This will work from a Time Machine backup and probably from the external disk if it is mounted in an enclosure. << Do this, Migration Assistant is there for a reason.
 
M

MarsianMan

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 19, 2007
43
0
Yeah, I bought the enclosure last night. It should be here before the laptop :) Re-installing? That seems so old fashioned. I was hoping that a full Time Machine restore would be possible. The problem with reinstalling is the places of preferences and stuff like MacPorts. Think if I just boot from the external and update it (the OS) that I can then use a full Time Machine restore?

Never used Migration Assistant; I will look into that as well.

What is the best way to make a true image of the Windows partition (including MBR, etc)?

Thanks!
 
cheesynz

cheesynz

macrumors newbie
Sep 15, 2008
6
0
NZ
possible to continue to use back up on a new machine?

Is it possible to continue to retrieve from a time machines past back ups when i have upgraded laptops? I have over a years worth of back ups and might wanna still retrieve from these when I upgrade laptops later next month - is this possible or not?
OR is it possible to partition the back up disk so I can still get to old back ups or not?
Is there any solution?
Other wise seems pretty daft to back up continuously and then these be completely defunct if you change or up grade laptops - defeats purpose!
 
M

MarsianMan

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 19, 2007
43
0
This was awhile ago, but I just used Migration Assistant (run from the OS X cd that was included) and restored the entire machine from Time Machine. It mostly worked, but I think I had some permissions issues for things like MacPorts; it was not very hard to solve and might not be something you run into. As for Windows, I used some cloning software to make a backup of the partition and then restored it on the new laptop. I cannot remember what software I used for it though, sorry.
 
M

MarsianMan

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 19, 2007
43
0
The entire process was surprisingly painless and easy. I was really quite pleased with the experience.
 
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