Resolved Moving working Yosemite Drive to 2006 Mac Pro

[maximusd]

I've been working on this for almost a week and it's driving me nuts.

Here's the deal:

My folks have a Mac Mini and I have a 2006 1,1 Mac Pro. I got a new MacBook Pro and have found little use for the tower around the house besides streaming iTunes to my Apple TV. My dad uses AutoCAD on the Mac Mini and it struggles a great deal. So I want to swap my tower for their mini. They are currently running Yosemite on the Mac Mini's internal HD which I cloned and attached to my MacBook Pro with an external HD dock. When I hold "option" to boot from the external so I can patch the boot.efi files I only get my MBP's internal, OS X Installer, and Recover disks as options, but NOT the Yosemite Boot disk.

Am I missing something? I have tried on 2 machines, including the Mac Mini whose HD I replaced with an SSD and a fresh install, but have not been able to boot from the external.

And, I cannot figure out how to get to the usr/standalone/i386 folder to replace the boot.efi file so I can boot directly from the drive in the tower.

There are tons of sites with tons of information on "Fresh Installing" Yosemite in unsupported Macs but very limited to nonexistent on porting an already running drive into an unsupported Mac.

Please help and thanks in advance.

EDIT:

Using this code: ‘open -a finder /volumes/volumename/usr/standalone/i386’ where ‘volumename’ is the name of the disk on which you’ve just installed Mavericks and ‘open -a finder /volumes/volumename/system/library/coreservices’.

from this site: http://retrocosm.net/2014/01/04/mac-pro-11-and-mavericks/

I was able to replace the boot.efi files in both locations. I have removed all of the drives except the clone with altered boot.efi's and when I start the Mac I get the folder with the "?"

The drive is not corrupt, because I can access the drive and it's contents from a different boot drive. It just won't boot.

Again, thanks in advance.

 

[orph]

why not just use migration assistant to move the files over?

 

[rigormortis]

you should not clone disks from different macs. this will not work. this is not realiable. different macs have different boot sectors. the rule of thumb was that the disk warrior cd had "multiple" boot tracks , it used to take 15 minutes or something to boot that cd

when you install os x , I'm pretty sure it installs kexts specific to your machine, just like how windows installs different drivers



you need to backup the old mac to time machine

install a fresh copy of Yosemite on the new mac, and then use migration assistant to import your time capsule. cloning should only be used to backup or restore or move a hard disk from a single machine

 

[orph]

you can just install OSX on to a new drive, then plug in your old OS drive via USB or internally and use migration assistant to move over the files I think.
works even if the drive is still in the mac min



im with rigormortis always best to clean install just keeps things clean.

can you just plug in your old drive and do a OSX install over it?
always makes me nevus but i think it's safe as long as you dont do a clean install, but check that.
ps i keep USB sticks as OSX install discs

 

[rigormortis]

i never tried the use a computers hard drive, directly with a mac to migrate

if you that, you can use thunderbolt or firewire and target disk mode
hold down the T key during boot on the old mac and use either those two cables

i tried that kind of thing with windows once, and it won't work, windows wants a machine thats working and can boot

 

[orph]

I used to boot from external drives a lot, just hold alt on startup and chose the boot volume you want.
(i have 3 OSX version on different partitions on my macpro 10.8 work, 10.9 test install,10.10 test install)

i think i miss read your post, your doing;

mac min to mac pro
mac pro to mac min

 

[orph]

not shore what drive setup you have in the mac pro, if you have 2 drives it's easy.

if you have
drive 1 - old os
drive 2 - spare

install a new copy of osx on to drive 2

plug in mac min to mac pro via usb/firewire then use migration assistant to move over files on to drive 2

check the files are all intact

then to clean install on to mac min

use migration asistent to move files over from mac pro drive 1

now your dance is done.

some one check that's ok tho

 

[MacVidCards]

I think everyone misunderstood your root issue because you should have posted in the "running Yosemite on a 1,1" thread.

It's so much simpler then you know.

Get the disc running as boot disk in Mini.

Run the pikeryosefix that black sheep made

Reboot until Mini won't boot to that disk anymore

Move disc to 1,1

Done

 

[maximusd]

I think everyone misunderstood your root issue because you should have posted in the "running Yosemite on a 1,1" thread.

It's so much simpler then you know.

Get the disc running as boot disk in Mini.

Run the pikeryosefix that black sheep made

Reboot until Mini won't boot to that disk anymore

Move disc to 1,1

Done

So far, this has worked perfectly. There were some self inflicted challenges along the way, but I am currently posting from the 1,1 in 10.10. Thank you everyone for your help.

@MacVidCards after running the pikeyosefix do I need to do anything else to make sure this stays up and running? Obviously I'll wait until the all clear is sounded for El Cap.

Thank you for replying with such a simple resolution.