Make new MBP a carbon copy of old MBA

[Hellishness]

So I just got a new (to me) Macbook pro. I have a time machine backup of my old air on an external HDD. It looks like the easiest thing is to put it into recovery mode and restore it from the time machine backup, which would erase the MBP's disk and move all the old data over. But it says not to do that. Migration assistant seems like more of a PITA and I don't think that it'll delete all the current data. The MBP is on 10.8, and the MBA was on 10.7.4. Would it be easiest to wipe all it's current data, reinstall 10.8 as a new computer, and transfer it all at that time? Would I even be able to do that since I didn't purchase 10.8? I have the mountain lion .dmg on a HDD, but I'm not sure if that'll help.

TIA

 

[Mal]

Wipe, reinstall 10.8, then use Migration Assistant during the setup process to transfer your data. That way you have a clean system before you transfer, and then everything available afterwards.

jW

 

[gentlefury]

So I just got a new (to me) Macbook pro. I have a time machine backup of my old air on an external HDD. It looks like the easiest thing is to put it into recovery mode and restore it from the time machine backup, which would erase the MBP's disk and move all the old data over. But it says not to do that. Migration assistant seems like more of a PITA and I don't think that it'll delete all the current data. The MBP is on 10.8, and the MBA was on 10.7.4. Would it be easiest to wipe all it's current data, reinstall 10.8 as a new computer, and transfer it all at that time? Would I even be able to do that since I didn't purchase 10.8? I have the mountain lion .dmg on a HDD, but I'm not sure if that'll help.

TIA

I restored my rMBP from my MBA time machine backup and it works perfectly fine.

 

[Hellishness]

Do you know if 10.8 will give me any trouble when reinstalling it? I know I couldn't reinstall 10.7 on my air because I technically never bought it on my apple ID--I got the laptop with Lion on it. The guy I sold it to said he could take care of it no problem.

 

[gentlefury]

Do you know if 10.8 will give me any trouble when reinstalling it? I know I couldn't reinstall 10.7 on my air because I technically never bought it on my apple ID--I got the laptop with Lion on it. The guy I sold it to said he could take care of it no problem.

You have to log in to your apple id in order to install any OS. I don't think you have to if you are installing from a time machine tho, since the OS is on the disk.

When I sold my MBA I told the new owner they would have to go on the app store and pay for ML (it was already installed) if they ever need to re-install the OS.

 

[Hellishness]

So what happens if I have a disk image of 10.8 on an external HDD? Will that work?

 

[Mal]

So what happens if I have a disk image of 10.8 on an external HDD? Will that work?

If it's just a disk image sitting on an external hard drive, you can burn that to a disk or restore it onto a partition or USB flash drive and do the install. If it contains the full installer (and isn't just a recovery drive), then there's no requirement to enter an AppleID before install (it will prompt after, but that's not required either).

jW

 

[Hellishness]

If it's just a disk image sitting on an external hard drive, you can burn that to a disk or restore it onto a partition or USB flash drive and do the install. If it contains the full installer (and isn't just a recovery drive), then there's no requirement to enter an AppleID before install (it will prompt after, but that's not required either).

jW

I'm not sure what it is. it says "OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.dmg" and is 4.35GB. How exactly would i go about wiping the current hard drive and reinstalling this?

 

[Hellishness]

Would my best option be to buy it in the mac app store and follow this to install it? That seems like what I may just end up doing.