Question about restoring a brand new Mac to a Time Machine backup

[mrat93]

I won't be doing this for a very long time, but I am wondering what the advantages and disadvantages are of getting a brand new Mac and either:

a.) Restoring to a Time Machine backup from a four year-old Mac that is showing its age.

OR

b.) Setting it up as a new Mac and manually transferring over all media, data, and applications.

If I restore it to a Time Machine backup, will it perform about as well as the four year-old Mac I'll be restoring it to (not including hardware advantages)? Or would it just be better to set it up as a new Mac and manually transfer everything over? Thanks.

 

[Tower-Union]

I think most people (myself included) will say do a clean install and copy everything over. Who wants all the extra library prefs and crap left from last time? Or for that matter all the kexts and drivers from your old machine?

 

[flatfoot]

I think most people (myself included) will say do a clean install and copy everything over. Who wants all the extra library prefs and crap left from last time? Or for that matter all the kexts and drivers from your old machine?

Driver installation isn't machine specific in OS X, i. e. all drivers are installed on all Macs anyway.
Plus, I don't care about old prefs-files lingering in my Library folder; HD drives are large enough today.

I rather wait for a slow Migration Assistant migration than having to reset permissions on hand-copied files, re-installing apps and prefpanes etc.

Just my 2 cents...

 

[mrat93]

Thanks for the quick reply, guys. But I don't think you really answered my question.

If I manually copied everything over (opposed to using Migration Assistant), would there be any difference in performance?

 

[miles01110]

If I manually copied everything over (opposed to using Migration Assistant), would there be any difference in performance?

Yes. It's difficult to say how much though, depending on what you're using. Some things like certain Applications will have to be reinstalled, as you won't be able to just drag them back onto your new machine. But generally you should see an increase in performance.