Moving backup from macbook to MBP

[primalobgyn]

Gonna preface this with "any help is appreciated"

My 6 year old macbook died on me but luckily crashplan had backed it up just before it died.
I now have 80gb of data in the crashplan cloud, 60gb of which is just photos!
I suspect it's because iphoto wastes so much space with thumbnails, previews, masters, and faces

I tried restoring that data onto a new mac mini and it was a disaster. It duplicated all the files for some reason and ended up using about 160 gb of the harddrive along with making it run ridiculously slow (3 hours for iphoto to open).

that being said I returned the mac mini and now plan on getting a macbook pro instead. I'm assuming the macmini disaster may have happened because I was running an older OS on the old macbook (snow leopard) and it was trying to restore that data onto Lion.

Any ideas as to how to avoid that same disaster when I try to restore all that crashplan data onto the new macbook pro?

sidenote: i'm thinkin iphoto is useless for that many photos. recommendations for photo cataloging? lightroom? aperature? just using folders/subfolders?

 

[AcesHigh87]

I don't know how exactly it works given your software. I know with time machine you can just hook your harddrive up to the new computer and use migration assistant to bring everything over. I guess given that your files are located on the cloud this might not work, however.

How exactly are the backups kept on this service? Can you see all the files in finder like with dropbox or are they encrypted to save space like Time Machine does?

 

[Fishrrman]

This doesn't address your immediate problem, but in the future, I would NOT "trust the cloud" as the only repository for my photos and other data. Frankly, I don't trust the cloud for ANYTHING, but that's just me. As an aside, you did trust the cloud, and it looks like it's not working as well as it should have.

You need a "local" (i.e., something you can touch) hard drive to serve as a backup, to supplement the cloud. It can also serve as a "bootable backup" which will get you back up and running IMMEDIATELY if you ever have a "boot problem" with your "main" drive.

There is nothing that can replace the convenience of having that second boot drive when your primary boot drive fails or you need access to backed-up files for other reasons. Things like "internet recovery" may work, but they are a long, involved process. With a second booter, you just connect it, turn it on, and boot -- it's that simple.

And actually, you need TWO backup drives if the photos you keep are important to you. Consider this situation:
1. You lose or accidentally delete a photo you wanted (on your primary drive), so…
2. You connect your "first backup" --- but the backup drive WON'T MOUNT! (something could be wrong)
3. With a "second backup", chances are it may mount when the first backup wouldn't -- gives you a new "lease on your data life"…. (actually, this is where the cloud can come in handy)

If I was backing up data I valued, I would do it this way:
- get a USB/SATA docking station (about $25-30)
- get two hard drives (3.5" or 2.5")
- use CarbonCopyCloner to create one backup, then "swap the drives" in the dock, and use CCC to do the second backup.
(for even more security, some folks store the 2nd backup "off-site", away from the building the computer is in -- fire, theft, etc.)

 

[primalobgyn]

I don't know how exactly it works given your software. I know with time machine you can just hook your harddrive up to the new computer and use migration assistant to bring everything over. I guess given that your files are located on the cloud this might not work, however.

How exactly are the backups kept on this service? Can you see all the files in finder like with dropbox or are they encrypted to save space like Time Machine does?

they are not encrypted.
It's basically the folders/subfolders all copied from macbook to crashplan server