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Please help, new MBA but can't boot from USB

likemyorbs

likemyorbs

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 20, 2008
1,956
5
NJ
I got a new macbook air today. I tried to boot from a mountain lion usb stick to get to disk utility and all i got on the screen was a circle with a slash through it. All I'm trying to do is copy my backup from my old mac that I have on my external HD to my new MBA, but it doesn't seem to be the seamless experience i thought it would be.
 
The OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion installer you have on USB is not a version, that is compatible with a 2013 MBA. For that you need to wait for 10.8.5 and make a USB installer out of that, since that 10.8.5 version will include the drivers for the 2013 MBA which comes with its own special build of 10.8.4.

And why do you need to boot from the installer to copy the content? Can you not do it via Finder or a cloning application or the Migration Assistant?
 
simsaladimbamba said:
And why do you need to boot from the installer to copy the content? Can you not do it via Finder or a cloning application or the Migration Assistant?
Click to expand...

I will try to use the migration assistant. For that I need to reinstall OS X from the recovery partitition because I deleted OS X earlier in preparation to copy from the old hard drive to the new one via disk utility. It didn't work btw to copy it, I got an error in disk utility.
 
likemyorbs said:
I will try to use the migration assistant. For that I need to reinstall OS X from the recovery partitition because I deleted OS X earlier in preparation to copy from the old hard drive to the new one via disk utility. It didn't work btw to copy it, I got an error in disk utility.
Click to expand...

Because the old version of Mac OS X you wanted to clone to the 2013 MBA is not compatible with the 2013 MBA as it does not have the proper drivers, even if the old copy is 10.8.4 and the MBA has 10.8.4, as the MBA's 10.8.4 version is a special build.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Because the old version of Mac OS X you wanted to clone to the 2013 MBA is not compatible with the 2013 MBA as it does not have the proper drivers, even if the old copy is 10.8.4 and the MBA has 10.8.4, as the MBA's 10.8.4 version is a special build.
Click to expand...

So what's the best way to get all my old stuff over to my new mac?
 
likemyorbs said:
So what's the best way to get all my old stuff over to my new mac?
Click to expand...

Reinstall OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion onto the 2013 MBA via recovery mode (CMD+R) and let it download the correct Mac OS X version (will take some time to download 4 GB), and then either use Setup or Migration Assistant to copy your data, settings and applications.

Migration Assistant / Setup Assistant information:
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Reinstall OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion onto the 2013 MBA via recovery mode (CMD+R) and let it download the correct Mac OS X version (will take some time to download 4 GB), and then either use Setup or Migration Assistant to copy your data, settings and applications.

Migration Assistant / Setup Assistant information:
Click to expand...

Will do that and let you know how it works out. Thanks
 
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