From OS X 10.5 to OSX 10.8...

[Illazaneva]

Hello, I have been working on a MacBook (old black intels) with 10.5.8 for years now and have always feared this moment would come, lol.
I have been saving my work thanks to Carbon Copy Cloner all this time (similar to time machine) onto two separate hard drives (USB & FireWire) via two complete disk images.

Now I just bought a Mac mini that runs on 10.8.
How am I going to get my old Macbook back into the new Mac mini, considering they are using different systems. It seems to be very simple but I'd like some advice before I make a huge mistake. Please HELP !! Thanks.

 

[Weaselboy]

Just run Migration Assistant (in /Applications/Utilities folder) on the new machine to transfer everything over. Once you start Migration Assistant you can just point it to your CCC clone as the data source. This will work even though you are on different versions.

 

[Fishrrman]

"I have been saving my work thanks to Carbon Copy Cloner all this time (similar to time machine) onto two separate hard drives (USB & FireWire) via two complete disk images."

I'm not sure whether Migration Assistant is going to be able to "see" and then open a disk image per se.

Here's what I would do:
1. Make a clone of your OLD drive to the firewire drive using CCC. Don't fool with "disk image". Just tell CCC to do a complete backup. When done, the backup volume should be "mountable" in the Finder.
2. Connect and mount the backup drive to the Mini, and use Migration Assistant to "assimilate" it.

IMPORTANT:
You should be aware that the new Mini running 10.8 will not be able to run any apps that are written in older "PowerPC" code. OS 10.8 is strictly "Intel-only" insofar as apps are concerned, there is no "Rosetta" any more to convert and run PPC code on the Intel CPU.

If you still depend on some PPC-based apps, you'll either have to upgrade them, or find replacement alternatives.

You can determine if the apps you normally use are PPC-based by running Apple System Profiler on the OLD Mac. On the left, select "Applications" and give the system a moment to compile a list. Then, look on the right and you'll see which apps are PPC-based, Intel, or "Universal Binary" (can be run in both PPC and Intel modes).

What this means when all is said and done, that -some- of the apps that get migrated over won't run "as is". Others probably will. Just something to be aware of.

 

[Weaselboy]

I'm not sure whether Migration Assistant is going to be able to "see" and then open a disk image per se.

It will work. I have imported with Migration Assistant using a CCC image.

 

[Illazaneva]

Thank you so much for the help, both of you. I use my Mac for Logic Studio 8, and it's the only thing I use it for. I read that it worked perfectly on 10.8 but I will check as you indicated in your post. What I'm more worried about are my plugins but that's another issue...