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Clean Install of Snow Leopard; Best way to move Data and apps; ?s and advice

M

mac.by.jake

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 30, 2008
60
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My situation, not too dissimilar from many, is this:

  • First, I had issues with my old hard drive that kept from using time machine, address book syncing with mobile me, shutting down, disk repair, and permissions repair.
  • Next, I did extensive research on each issue and realized the best thing to do was upgrade my hard-drive (from 110 Gigs to 500 Gigs and an additional gig of memory) and start fresh with Snow Leopard
  • I used carbon copy to do a complete bootable copy of my previous hard drive. I do not have any time machine backups.
  • I opted to save time and have a local shop (Onyx here in Atlanta) do the HD install
  • I did not have them do a data move or port.

So now I am left with getting all my necessary apps, preferences, and other data (photos, iTunes, etc...) either installed and updated or moved from the old hard-drive.

I've run across a few threads on here that talk about these items but I still have a few questions. Some are basic so please forgive me.

  • Will I have any problems reinstalling the applications (like iWork, MS Office 08, Adobe Acrobat 8, Omni Focus, Omni Notetaker, and/or other paid apps) with the serial numbers used on my previous hard-drive?
  • Is it better to reinstall these apps or move them over?
  • How does one move over apps? Is it best to the migration tool? (I've never used the migration tool)
  • I don't want to corrupt my permissions or library files as I had done on my previous harddrive. So will using the migration tool to move apps over move over the corrupted or troubled library files associated with particular apps?
  • Are there good threads that speak to these particular issues? Also, are there helpful guides, online books or sites that speak to these issues?

I do want to get a clean start but there are some things I dont' want to lose. Things like my bookmarks in Firefox and Safari, my OmniFocus database.

Lastly, the technician thought my original 110 gig hard-drive was about physically die due to how slowly it shut down and given the issues I was having. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

You're help will be greatly appreciated.
 
Wishing for some help

So I'm kind of a newbie...and thus, I'm wondering why no has responded...
 
Ok first off, I would strongly suggest you not use the Migration Assistant for your files due to the problems you mentioned on your previous drive.

I would suggest you:

- Boot up from your carbon copy drive
- Extract or export data like bookmarks, address book contacts, preferences, itunes music folder from the drive mentioned above.
- Transfer them over to the new drive to their default locations, or import them (like address book archive)
- Certain apps can be moved over, but i wouldnt recommend doing so for Microsoft and Adobe programs, its better to reinstall them. The rest, you can just drag and drop like normal files and folders = installed.

I know how stressful this can be especially for someone who is not very technical, hence feel free to PM or email me if you need more guidance. I'm happy to help as much as I can.

Hope it helps.
 
- Boot up from your carbon copy drive
- Extract or export data like bookmarks, address book contacts, preferences, itunes music folder from the drive mentioned above.
This will be very helpful. I was wondering if I could export and then import.
- Transfer them over to the new drive to their default locations, or import them (like address book archive)
Address book I use MobileMe so that has been restored
- Certain apps can be moved over, but i wouldnt recommend doing so for Microsoft and Adobe programs, its better to reinstall them. The rest, you can just drag and drop like normal files and folders = installed.
Perfect thanks for the confirmation.

I know how stressful this can be especially for someone who is not very technical, hence feel free to PM or email me if you need more guidance. I'm happy to help as much as I can.

Hope it helps.


Other questions:
Keychains - I'm thinking of just starting clean with Keychains. I bought 1Password and will be using it instead of keychains. The only thing I want are my wifi hotspot keys. Any idea on how to get those?
iPhoto Library - I've got 2 libraries that I want to combine into one. Is this easy to do? I'm sure it is; I've not done the research yet.
 
mac.by.jake said:
- Boot up from your carbon copy drive
- Extract or export data like bookmarks, address book contacts, preferences, itunes music folder from the drive mentioned above.
This will be very helpful. I was wondering if I could export and then import.
- Transfer them over to the new drive to their default locations, or import them (like address book archive)
Address book I use MobileMe so that has been restored
- Certain apps can be moved over, but i wouldnt recommend doing so for Microsoft and Adobe programs, its better to reinstall them. The rest, you can just drag and drop like normal files and folders = installed.
Perfect thanks for the confirmation.

I know how stressful this can be especially for someone who is not very technical, hence feel free to PM or email me if you need more guidance. I'm happy to help as much as I can.

Hope it helps.


Other questions:
Keychains - I'm thinking of just starting clean with Keychains. I bought 1Password and will be using it instead of keychains. The only thing I want are my wifi hotspot keys. Any idea on how to get those?
iPhoto Library - I've got 2 libraries that I want to combine into one. Is this easy to do? I'm sure it is; I've not done the research yet.
Click to expand...

Just open up keychain access (spotlight it) and look for your Wireless Network Name eg, Apple Airport. Open it and click show password. They will prompt u for your computer password to see the access key.

You can combine 2 iPhoto libraries by opening one first, and then drag all the photos from the 2nd library's folder into the first through iPhoto. You probably have to do some organizing again but the the bulk of the photos should stay in the pre-configured albums/events
 
Ice-Cube said:
Just open up keychain access (spotlight it) and look for your Wireless Network Name eg, Apple Airport. Open it and click show password. They will prompt u for your computer password to see the access key.
Click to expand...

I may be confused...on the keychain and hotspot info:

Does keychain store the Network SSID and the passwords for the different hotspots that one visits? For example I have probably 100 hotspots stored somewhere in my old hard-drive. It may be in the network prefs. I thought they were all stored in Keychain. If so could I export all of them. Or, do I need to go through them individually?

Thanks for iPhoto - basically there you are saying pull the photos through with the folder structure not the big bulk file that represents iPhoto.
 
Ice-Cube said:
The keychains folder is at User>Library>Keychains. Just replace that with on your new system. It does save all the network SSIDs and password there.

And yes for iPhoto.
Click to expand...

Ok - so somehow I messed up my old keychains file. I created a password and forgot it. So I either need to do something to clean it up.

Here are my thoughts:

1.Boot up on my external drive with old boot image and clean it up from there and then copy the file over.
2. Copy the file over and then clean it up on the hard-drive with OSX10.6
 
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