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migration assistant and time machine

A

ayres

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 27, 2010
290
50
hey everyone... i'll be handing my 13mbp down to my wife whose mb went belly up, and i'll be grabbing a new mbp. so i have a question...

from what i understand, i could copy everything over by either migration assistant or time machine. i'll be prompted in the beginning to choose one or the other.

i use tm anyway every few weeks, and i'm prepared to do it again in the next day or two.

so what are some of the differences between these two techniques?

tm will do an exact copy over to the new hdd, right?

what is the end result of migration assistant? does it or doesn't it result with the new machine looking identical to the old one?

i understand that migration assistant requires connecting the two.

what would be the time differences between the two? approx 200gb of this and that. is one faster than the other?

any other points to consider?

much thanks! :)
 
BrianBaughn

BrianBaughn

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2011
9,637
2,408
Baltimore, Maryland
You'll be using Migration Assistant either way. You can migrate from the TM backup or from the original Mac. If the original MB is "belly up", how were you going to connect them? You could...by removing the hard drive and connecting it somehow to the your MBP...if the MB HD is not dead.

The results are the same if your TM backup is current.

TM will not copy everything over. It just brings over the user's documents, settings and applications that are not on the new MBP...in a new user account. Your account will still be on the MBP.

What were/are the OS versions on her MB and your MBP?
 
EricaV

EricaV

macrumors regular
Sep 20, 2008
135
5
Migrating my MB to a new MBP- help !

I have the same question. I just tried this using migration assistant and hooked my TM right to the new machine. For some odd reason everything that is directly on my Mac HD was copied but none of my documents or music libraries etc. were copied.

They are stored under "places" and my "home" icon. This is probably a result of me just not knowing where my account files are stored. Is there something I can do to use this same method and try again ?

For instance, If I move my documents folder to my Mac HD and then do another TM backup will that do the trick ? The only option migration assistant gave me was whether to choose the Mac HD and/or Bootcamp HD.

Of course all my music and photo libraries are stored in my home/places which is on my Mac HD so I'm confused as to why TM and migration assistant would not transfer all of this too.

Any help appreciated

Erica

BrianBaughn said:
You'll be using Migration Assistant either way. You can migrate from the TM backup or from the original Mac. If the original MB is "belly up", how were you going to connect them? You could...by removing the hard drive and connecting it somehow to the your MBP...if the MB HD is not dead.

The results are the same if your TM backup is current.

TM will not copy everything over. It just brings over the user's documents, settings and applications that are not on the new MBP...in a new user account. Your account will still be on the MBP.

What were/are the OS versions on her MB and your MBP?
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