Help setting up nMP with Time Machine after old startup drive died

[The3rdMan]

Thanks to a RAM meltdown on my old 2006 Mac Pro, I just purchased a nMP that will be shipped in a few weeks. Aside from ruining the RAM risers it also ruined my startup disk but thankfully not the drive that has my Time Machine backups (or my other drives).

So is it possible to restore my startup drive from my TM disk onto my new MP when setting it up or do I have to restore my dead drive to a separate new one first using TM (I have an empty hard disk in an external enclosure large enough to take all the data) and then copy that drive over through migration assistant when setting up my new machine? (hope that makes sense)

I would need to find a way to put an OS on the empty external drive first (have no idea where my startup CD is and its ancient anyway) before copying over the data from TM so would really prefer to restore the drive right onto the nMP when going through setup.

As an aside, does the fact that my old drive was using Lion (10.7.5) screw up the migration process since the nMP comes with Mavericks?

 

[ApfelKuchen]

So is it possible to restore my startup drive from my TM disk onto my new MP when setting it up or do I have to restore my dead drive to a separate new one first using TM (I have an empty hard disk in an external enclosure large enough to take all the data) and then copy that drive over through migration assistant when setting up my new machine? (hope that makes sense)

Before answering your questions, a word of reassurance. Your scenario (restoring a Time Machine backup to a new machine after a failure of the old machine) is a fundamental assumption of Time Machine. It's quite straightforward.


You can use the TM disk to directly restore to the new machine's startup "disk." When you first start the new machine, Setup Assistant will give you several options, among them to restore from a Time Machine backup.

One thing to mention: Do NOT create a new User when setting up the new machine - the existing User account(s) will be transferred from Time Machine. If you create a new user account on the new machine with the same name as the account on the old machine, you will have two user accounts when the dust settles: User and User1 (User1 being the data from the old computer).

I would need to find a way to put an OS on the empty external drive first (have no idea where my startup CD is and its ancient anyway) before copying over the data from TM so would really prefer to restore the drive right onto the nMP when going through setup.

There's no need to put an OS on an empty external drive. Time Machine will restore directly to the new machine's internal drive. Time Machine will NOT over-write the OS - it transfers system settings, user accounts, data, and apps, and preserves the OS currently on the new machine.

As an aside, does the fact that my old drive was using Lion (10.7.5) screw up the migration process since the nMP comes with Mavericks?

No, it won't mess things up. You can go "forward" to Mavericks. You wouldn't, for example, be able to go backwards to Snow Leopard.

See this Apple article for more details: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5872

 

[The3rdMan]

Thanks so much for your help. Funny enough my Macbook just loaded my damaged disk after putting it an external dock and Im copying what's left of the drive onto my empty external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. I thought it was dead and unrecoverable. I tried to boot it a dozen times yesterday and only got the grey screen or the Apple icon. Took it to the Genius bar today where they couldn't even load it to analyze it...and they tried multiple times with multiple procedures and...nothing. Went and bought the USB dock anyway to try and see if my wife's Macbook would detect and again, nothing. Then tried it one last time and it loaded.

Tried to repair the disk through disk utility but I got the "this disk is cannot be repaired, try to save all your files, etc." So at least I'll have another copy and bootable drive...hopefully.