How to Properly Migrate With a Clean Install to OS X Mountain Lion (From Lion/SL)

Steve.P.JobsFan said:

I don't think anybody has encountered that issue. I'll try and find a resolution to this issue.

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Thanks for your reply.

I don't think you should spend any time searching for a solution. My best guess is that Time Machine's equivalent to meta data has been corrupted.

I'm going to restore to Lion, make another TM backup and begin the upgrade process again.

Thanks anyway.

Can't thank you enough for the guide, I'm still waiting on whether or not to upgrade....

Tough decisions

opinioncircle said:

Can't thank you enough for the guide, I'm still waiting on whether or not to upgrade....

Tough decisions

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Why wait?

Not sure if this has been asked but when I hit restore in disk utility (I think step 9) it says error and something about resource not ready. Any ideas?

trustme said:

Not sure if this has been asked but when I hit restore in disk utility (I think step 9) it says error and something about resource not ready. Any ideas?

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Is this from Recovery HD, or on your main system?

Also, have you tried verifying the disk?

Branskins said:

Is this from Recovery HD, or on your main system?

Also, have you tried verifying the disk?

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Main system onto a USB drive. I don't think I verified or repaired it. Will try.

Ok, if you don't migrate at first is there a way to do it later strictly from the external hd used via Time Machine? If so how? Because when I go to migration assistant amd get to the step where you select the files you want to migrate, they're all greyed out yet all are selected. I don't want to migrate the complete back up, I just want to choose certain apps and migrate my pictures, iTunes Library, Aperture Library, iPhoto, etc, etc.

I have a feeling I won't get an answer. I seem to always run into problems that even the pros are stumped about.

Ok, so when I choose another partition to migrate from, it does allow me to select the files. The only one that it doesn't is the partition that has a back up of the mac that I want to migrate folder from.

Should I do this manually? Can I just go into my external disk and drag the files I want?

I have exactly the same issue as you.

Your options are a) upgrade to Mountain Lion as a clean install and manually restore (i.e. 'drag') your files from Time Machine or b) wait for Apple in the hope they fix Migration Assistant (as they did shortly after the release of 10.7).

I'm certain the issue is intermittant and related to Migration Assistant. To try to prove this, I rolled back to Lion, wiped the TM drive and rebuilt the TM backup. Upgraded to Mountain Lion and problem with the greyed-out options persists.

Whilst I've seen many complaints across these forums regarding restoring from a Lion-based TM backup, there is no guarantee that Apple will release a fix. My only evidence to the possibility is the Migration Assistant fix they issued after the release of Lion (note that I did not have this issue previously and did not require the fix to upgrade from 10.6 to 10.7).

For the record, I've not made a decision yet on which approach to take but as it's costing me money it looks likely that I'll roll back to Lion and wait it out.

wow! thank you!!!

this morning, i was looking at options to copy my mails while i was half asleep. in the end, just did an install on top. but now that i have this document, its gonna be a fun weekend

Thank you!

Thank you so much for posting this guide and thread!

I've never done an install of an OS before and I followed your guide and everything worked out great. I started with a tired 2009 MacBook aluminum non-pro, and installed Mountain Lion along with adding 8gb of RAM and a 256gb crucial m4 SSD, it is a night and day difference!

The cost of the upgrade including purchasing Mountain Lion was $245 and it feels like a brand new computer. Using Time Machine to reinstall all my apps and documents worked perfectly, they all (including photoshop cs5) copied over fantastic.

Thanks again!

TONS of permissions issues and a disk repair needed. Help!

I've only had my Mac since late 2009 and I've loved it. I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and I'd like to upgrade to ML this weekend. I just ran the disk util and went to Verify Disk and I was told "The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired."

I have no real idea how to proceed from here. I still have my MacBook Pro box, so I'm sure my install disc is in there. I would greatly appreciate help on what to do from here. I have a 500GB external HDD and I have backed up my drive in Time Machine. If I repair the disk from my install CD will I lose any of my data? If I do repair the disk, will that also resolve any permissions issues?

Appreciate the help!!

Problem creating USB key & How to properly migrate data?

slynger said:

So I've tried this tutorial a few times and I get an error message at the end of making the USB drive and when I boot to it, it isn't there.

I've tried the supposedly user-friendly Discmaker app and that isn't working either.

What am I doing wrong? I have a 2009 macbook 6,1 - any help is greatly welcomed??

edit - so it looks like all the files made it to the USB, but when I boot to it I don't have that as an option?

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Hello OP, I would also like to thank you for the work and all the answers you gave so far, well done!
I would like to confirm the quotes regarding USB key problems, but I am quite sure the reason could be the USB key itself. I am using a SanDisc Cruiser and I believe it is the reason. (Saw it also on a screenshot from another post) There might be some files embedded on the SanDisk which could cause the failures. However, that said, I thought after several failures I somehow managed it, but I think I simply didnt put the "Brand Name and Type" into the destination, I chose the "Untiteled" after formatting which is different from what is in the PDF(?). But that also said, I better verify again, at this point I only created the key (it says 4,7GB used and when restarting with alt/option it finds it as Mountain Lion) but did not start the installation. Anyone out here who can confirm problems when using a SanDisk Cruiser?
Secondly. I am unsure how to best migrate the data from the back-up which I made with a USB-drive, this is why I didnt start yet. I want to do a clean install, since I want to get rid of a lot stuff, also Apps. There are only 4 back-ups I interested in, it would be kind if someone could advise me how to do it best:
1. My Addressbook data (so much work...)
2. My Mail data & archive (too important to get lost)
3. iTunes (Music, Podcasts, aso. - I dont use the libary, I have a folder structure in the folder "Music" - Can I simply select the "Music" folder after the clean install from the USB back-up drive and copy it to ML? What about hidden folders, are the some?)
4. iPhoto (Here I use the libary, can I pick this from the back-up and transfer it? Will all be transferred, is there something to consider?
By the way i dont use iCloud (yet, except you recommend it now) and my hardware is a 2011 Air.
Great thread, very nice to read all the single entries - now I hope for a little help.

Steve.P.JobsFan said:

If you're wanting to wait because you think Mountain Lion has bugs, don't. I haven't found any bugs (on my end) in Mountain Lion. Although, I've had one issue. Whenever I plug in headphones, my iMac doesn't play through the headphones. I unplug them, and OS X still thinks that my headphones are plugged in, and plays audio in the headphone jack. I end up having to reboot a gazillion times, or reset the SMC, to get audio working through the built-in speakers, and the headphone jack. I don't think this is a software bug, it's a hardware fault. It's been happening since I dropped the $1600 on this thing in February.

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The only reason I'm waiting is for time to get the upgrade done properly. And also to get a real good solution for backing up, which is extremely limited for me at the moment.

As for bugs, you're right, I do have some issues with that ever since some iOS upgrade came all the way back in 2010 about syncing with iTunes and whatnot.

Unmount first

Hi,

Thanks for the good tutorial. I just have one correction/question. I kept getting a message from the Disk Utility stating that the disk i busy when I try to restore. To fix this I needed to unmount the partition in the Disk Utility. I've spent a good deal of time to to find out what the problem was. Also, the images in the guide does not show the installation .dmg, so I was a bit confused but I think I've finally figured it out (it's restoring right now).

But I thank you for you good work! It's great to have guides like this for all us beginners

Won't go into boot manager

Hi,

I've tried to create a bootable USB drive both using your guide and the "lion disk maker" app. But when the USB is inserted in my iMac and i restart and hold down "option" then I just boots into Lion. If I remove the USB I can get the boot manager and boot from a CD or in bootcamp...

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

I did an upgrade to ML, and for me, it is not showing ML in my applications folder, only Lion...any ideas on where I can find ML?

Weaselboy said:

Mountain Lion deletes the installer from Applications after it installs itself. If you want it back you will need to DL again from the App Store.

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Gotcha thanks !

Upgrading today! Wish me luck

Ok, repaired my disk and the permissions from my install CD, backed up to Time Machine and have my Snow Leopard up to date with version 10.6.8. Time to follow the guide and move to Mountain Lion. Wish me luck! Hopefully I won't have to get on my iPhone to ask for help due to any issues. lol.

ARGH! WTH am I doing wrong?

Ok, following the guide and I can't get this to work.

I've been able to erase my flash drive and format it, no problem. On step 8 I get the InstallESD.dmg in the "Source" field, but when I try to drag the name and storage size of my flash drive to the "Destination" field it won't work. I am forced to choose the "Untitled" sub-drive listing and drag it to the "Destination" field. It allows me to do this without any problems.

I get alllllll the way to the end of Step 9 and with less than 1 minute of verifying the image I get an error that states: "Restore failure: Could not restore - Cannot allocate memory."

What am I doing wrong?? Appreciate any help.

Jakobben said:

Hi,

Thanks for the good tutorial. I just have one correction/question. I kept getting a message from the Disk Utility stating that the disk i busy when I try to restore. To fix this I needed to unmount the partition in the Disk Utility. I've spent a good deal of time to to find out what the problem was. Also, the images in the guide does not show the installation .dmg, so I was a bit confused but I think I've finally figured it out (it's restoring right now).

But I thank you for you good work! It's great to have guides like this for all us beginners

Click to expand...

You're not the only one having issues. What's weird is that I created a boot disk for Lion and had no issues with it, but I can't seem to create a USB disk that works for ML.

When I erase my USB disk it still shows a couple of partitions. Then when I try to restore InstallESD.dmb to the USB disk it never works. I have to eject the partitions showing for the USB drive and then it will try to restore, only to fail several minutes from completion with a "invalid argument" error.

I was able to restore the Mac OS X Install ESD (by mounting InstallESD.dmg and then explicitly doing restore on the Mac OS X Install ESD partition) to the USB drive, but this resulted in a drive that never seemed to boot ML fully. It would present itself as a bootable disk but it would just sit there during boot with the Apple logo eventually becoming a blank icon and I finally just hard rebooted the computer.

I will start scouring for other instructions on making a boot disk for ML because I'm not having much success with this approach.

Also as someone else pointed out, while someone taking the time to create a guide is much appreciate, it seems that there might be some steps that are missing or not particularly well articulated, not to mention the use of at least one "screenshot" which shows disks/partitions that have nothing to do with the task at hand, which leads to further confusion.