Migrating Time Machine Back up different Mac

I would never trust a TM backup for migration, especially if it is to a network drive. I have successfully used TM backups for migration, but only under very specific circumstances. Before beginning migration, I created a brand new TM backup to a local disk connected either by Firewire or USB. Once that backup completed, I migrated from it.

More often than not, I migrate from one Mac to the next using target disk mode. I boot the old Mac into target disk mode, then when the new Mac asks me where to get the migration data, the old Mac shows up as if it were simply a Firewire drive. I pick it and I'm good to go. I used this for my first migration from a 2007 Macbook to a 2008 Macbook and my most recent migration from a 2008 Macbook to a late 2011 Macbook Pro.

Now for your situation...

Since your 2008 Mac is inop, I suggest you first try to migrate from your TM backup. If that fails, all is not lost. Simply whip out a quarter and take out your battery, then take out 4 screws to access your hard drive. Connect it to your new Mac via a USB to SATA cable and you should be able to migrate from your old Macbook's HDD even if the old Mac won't boot up. (Of course this assumes the reason it won't boot up is not the HDD itself ).

I'm not sure why you're talking about partitioning. Partitioning is not something you should have to worry about. If you decide later you want two partitions, there's nothing stopping you from opening disk utility and dynamically resizing Macintosh HD so you can have another disk partition to use for some other purpose. You can create the second partition and format it HFS+ journaled and even install a separate version of OSX on the thing. This is the method I used for testing developer previews of ML and Mavericks before I decided to simply use a leftover 2.5 inch drive with a USB/SATA cable.

Hope this helps...

 

I literally just glanced at this, which seems to apply to your situation: http://www.macworld.com/article/2066996/how-to-transfer-backups-from-time-machine-to-a-new-mac.html

I have had a hard drive crap out on me, and successfully got back to where it was with a new hard drive and using the restore function to restore it from TM backup. (restart, hold cmd-r).