Restoring a drive

[86gn]

I have a mid-2010 13" MacBook Pro running macOS 10.13.6 with a 500Gb SSD that my wife uses for reading email and lite web surfing.

Recently it quit booting and the Recovery panel would not fix the problem. I suspect that a bad power supply (now replaced) led to corrupting the boot sector. I also replaced the IO cable since I've had several of those fail over the years.

I've installed a new 500Gb SSD with a clean install of 10.13.6 into the unit and it is booting. I can place the old system drive in a SATA-USB adapter and access the files from the old drive.

What is the best way to restore my wife's files and applications?

Should I try to restore the OS on the original drive or should I try to bring her data and apps over to the new drive?

If I need to copy the files from the old drive to the new drive, which directories and files do I need to copy?

Thanks

 

[Weaselboy]

Have you made an account on the clean install on the new drive? If not, when you first start it up use the setup assistant to import your old account and your data and apps from the old drive.

 

[86gn]

Thank you. I had created a user and skipped over the import in the Setup. I deleted the .AppleSetupDone file and I reran setup to bring in the users and apps.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP, that was a very good trick (deleting the .applesetupdone file)!

I used that method once myself to repair someone else's MBP (he had somehow lost his administrative privileges, I sense that he had inadvertently changed his user account from administrative to regular, and for some reason he couldn't access his account any more).

I deleted the setup file and the computer booted "as new", then I created a new administrative account, then used it to access the owner's account and change it from non-administrative to administrative. Solved!

Did you then delete the original user account you used to first set up the new drive?

 

[Taz Mangus]

How is it different in how Migration Assistant works if you simply run Migration Assistant again vs. deleting .applesetupdone file and restarting?

 

[86gn]

Thank you. Searching the internet sometimes still provides a solution.

Yes, I did delete the "original" user account that I had created on the initial setup of the new drive.

It wasn't technically necessary however the account name was my wife's first and last name and identical to her account name on the old drive. I solved the duplicate account name issue when bringing in the old account by converting the old account to her first name for her account name then deleting the account name that wasn't needed.

For WAF it was better to delete the unneeded account. Since she would have seen two accounts on boot, "First Name" and "First Name Last Name".

 

[Weaselboy]

How is it different in how Migration Assistant works if you simply run Migration Assistant again vs. deleting .applesetupdone file and restarting?

To run MA you would need an account to run it from, and that creates problems with the import.

When you setup an account in a Mac a User ID is assigned. The first account will be assigned 501, second account 502, and so on.

So if you open a new Mac and make and account on it, it will be User ID 501. Then if you launch MA and import the old account (which will also likely be 501) it imports the old 501 account on top of the new 501 account and creates all kinds of odd permissions issues. So the best practice is to do the import as part of the initial system setup and it will bring in the old 501 account with no issues.

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oldtoad.net

Old article here talking about this problem.

 

[86gn]

How is it different in how Migration Assistant works if you simply run Migration Assistant again vs. deleting .applesetupdone file and restarting?

The suggestion above was to run setup, and since I had already run it, I searched for the way to rerun it. It was a simple one line RM command in Terminal and reboot. Setup does mention that if you skip importing at this time you can run Migration Assistant later.

Since I do not do much with the Mac OS I originally thought it might be a simple action to just move a few folders from the original drive to the new drive. It turns out that you are much better off to use either of Setup or Migration Assistants.