Mac Pro 2,1 to 5,1 OS transfer?

[judino28]

I've got a question I've always wondered about when contemplating upgrading that I haven't personally seen any discussion about.

If I were to upgrade from a 2,1 to 5,1 would I be able to simply swap in the new hard drives? I'm currently running 10.9, 10.11, and Windows 7 Ultimate. For Windows, I figure I would just need to activate again and probably update the bootcamp drivers.

However, Mavericks and El Capitan are running with the modified boot.efi files. Wouldn't these create an issue on the new, officially supported, 5,1 hardware? Would I need to do a fresh reinstall, or somehow change the boot.efi files back to the "normal" versions? Just curious on how easy such a transfer would be as my goal would be to keep using the same drives with as little reconfiguration as possible.

Any insights are most appreciated!

 

[DeltaMac]

There's a couple of scenarios:
Move the OS X drives to the 5,1 system. Boot to each "normal" OS X installer, and reinstall OS X on each drive (assuming that the separate systems are installed on different drives), or reinstalling OS X to each partition that has a bootable OS X system.
But, I would prefer starting with blank drives in the 5,1. Install OS X versions, then import apps, files and settings from the old drives for each system - one at a time, of course. If your setup is that simple (one system + apps and files, all on one volume), then that will give you a fresh install, then everything else would go into place during the migration. Caches, and various other temp files would not be part of the migration, so you would get a certain amount of purging of files that are no longer needed (and would be re-created as you start using that system anyway)
So, the OS X systems would be simple, and should leave you with exactly the same setup, just new hardware.
I can't help you with the Windows changeover. But you may get by with a Windows repair install, and updating the boot camp drivers, and likely calling the Windows support line to get your activation swapped to the new hardware.

 

[splifingate]

I've got a question I've always wondered about when contemplating upgrading that I haven't personally seen any discussion about.

If I were to upgrade from a 2,1 to 5,1 would I be able to simply swap in the new hard drives? I'm currently running 10.9, 10.11, and Windows 7 Ultimate. For Windows, I figure I would just need to activate again and probably update the bootcamp drivers.

However, Mavericks and El Capitan are running with the modified boot.efi files. Wouldn't these create an issue on the new, officially supported, 5,1 hardware? Would I need to do a fresh reinstall, or somehow change the boot.efi files back to the "normal" versions? Just curious on how easy such a transfer would be as my goal would be to keep using the same drives with as little reconfiguration as possible.

Any insights are most appreciated!

Last pulled an ElCap (w/Piker mods) into my 5,1 from my 1,1 a few months ago, and--while I could view all the files with the 5,1--it was unable to boot. I did not revert-back to the stock boot.efi (et al.), but (thanks to your psot), I do need to remember to make a fresh install of ElCap on the 5,1 and do some comparison/testing of various issues I have been working-on (Photos/iCloud/etc.).

I 2nd DeltaMac . . . keep it clean, and keep it simple. You will come to appreciate just how easy it is to make these transitions.

Regards, splifingate

 

[hwojtek]

No need to mess about.
If you have a pikified install of ElCap in the 2,1 and any (although preferably ElCap) MacOS in the 5,1 just swap the drives from the 2,1 into the 5,1, boot from the original 5,1 drive, replace boot.efi twice on your old drive with the ElCap original, restart holding ALT and boot from the 2,1 drive.
After successful boot you may install the ElCap updates relevant to the 5,1 or just go High Sierra right away.

The other option would be to put the old drive into the 5,1, boot it from the original drive, run "Install MacOS High Sierra" pointing it to the old drive and everything you had on the 2,1 will be ready to run and with the current OS installed.