new macbook air doesn't boot from backup Snow Leopard drive

[uicandrew]

I need some help from the collective community.

Before i got my new macbook air (the sandy bridge ones), i had an iMac backed up (via super duper) onto a portable western digital my passport hard drive.

if i connect the drive to the macbook air, i can browse and open documents, as if it were a portable hard drive.

however, when i tried booting from it (i.e. - select startup drive), the macbook just shows a black screen (it's on, but no other color but black)

could this be related to not being able to do a clean install of snow leopard on the new macs.

any help would be greatly appreciated!

Andrew

 

[simsaladimbamba]

As Macs generally can't be installed with a Mac OS X version prior to the one that they have been delivered with, you can't run 10.6 on a machine that came with 10.7, as there are no drivers in 10.6 for the 2011 MBA.

 

[MRU]

Can you not simply use the migrate/transfer assistant on the new MBA and when it asks for source point it to your external backup. It should then install the applications that are supported and your home document folder.

 

[uicandrew]

Can you not simply use the migrate/transfer assistant on the new MBA and when it asks for source point it to your external backup. It should then install the applications that are supported and your home document folder.

The problem is, the hard drive is 460gb so I can't just transfer everything over.

And I want to get to my iPhone backups. I wanted to backup my phone without losing everything because there are no apps or media on my new MBA.

 

[KPOM]

The problem is, the hard drive is 460gb so I can't just transfer everything over.

And I want to get to my iPhone backups. I wanted to backup my phone without losing everything because there are no apps or media on my new MBA.

I think the best solution here would be to run Migration Assistant and copy over what you can. Then re-connect the drive and then drag your iPhone backups to your new MacBook Air's iTunes folder.

 

[darngooddesign]

The problem is, the hard drive is 460gb so I can't just transfer everything over.

And I want to get to my iPhone backups. I wanted to backup my phone without losing everything because there are no apps or media on my new MBA.

Just manually copy over the items you want.