Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Snow Leopard Migration Question

I

iNeko

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 13, 2007
222
0
England
Hi guys, I've got a new drive on the way for my macbook pro, and an external enclosure for the old hard drive. Is it possible to use Snow Leopard's Migration Assistant, after installing on it the new drive, to get everything off my old drive in the enclosure over usb?

The drive in the enclosure will have my current 10.5.8 install with my apps and settings on it, untouched.

Thanks :)
 
No replies :(

My new drive and Snow Leopard should both arrive soon, my plan is to remove the old drive with 10.5.8 on it and put it in an external usb enclosure then install Snow Leopard to the new drive. Once that's done, I wanted to use Migration Assistant to copy all my files back from the old drive via usb.

I've searched, but I can't seem to find anyone doing this
 
I don't believe Migration assistant will pull data off of another system disk.

Is there some particular reason you can't do a Time Machine backup of your current install and use THAT with Migration Assistant after you install on your new drive?

That's what users normally do.
 
I thought it would be easier if it could copy everything off the old drive...

Would it be possible to do a TM backup of this 250gb drive then use Migration Assistant to restore the backup to my new 320gb one? I thought it had to be the same drive for some reason :confused:
 
Nope, it will work fine. I just did the same thing. I got a new hard drive for my birthday (same day Snow Leopard arrived), and I installed Snow Leopard and used the Migration Assistant to restore my backup.
 
My Leopard System Drive was a 500GB Drive in a Mac Pro, I backed up the drive back to Time Machine, put a new 1TB drive in, formatted the drive. Put the snow leopard DVD in and chose to boot off the DVD. Installed leopard on the 1TB drive then migrated all my data from Time Machine on to the new 1TB drive. worked like a dream ( but did take a while to put all the data back, so left it overnight). As well as the option to restore data and files from a Time machine backup there was an option to restore date from another internal disk (but did not use that option).

Dang it too slow :) However you know know more than one did this successfully :)
 
Fantastic news, thanks everyone :) I'll dust off the old 1TB external drive and have a TM backup run on my MBP in preparation for SL! The only concern I have now is that my external is usb, will that cause any issues?
 
iNeko said:
Fantastic news, thanks everyone :) I'll dust off the old 1TB external drive and have a TM backup run on my MBP in preparation for SL! The only concern I have now is that my external is usb, will that cause any issues?
Click to expand...

Other than being a little slow, it shouldn't cause any issues at all.
 
I installed a new HD in my Mac Pro (1TB WD Caviar Black) on to which I installed a clean copy of Snow Leopard. I'm now in the process of migrating all my data from my 10.5.8 HD on to the new HD via the Migration Assistant.

My Mac says 2.5 hrs remaining still, but hopefully it'll be fully functional when completed. Internal to internal drive, but there's over 400GB of data to move.
 
Thanks for the updates :) I'm feeling much more confident now - I've made a TM backup (68gb, not that bad really for an 8 month old uMBP) so all I need now is my SL family pack and my new drive! Then once this uMBP is done, I can then update the old MBP (Rev A) and the Mac Mini (intel Rev A) the same way!

The Mac Mini I have is just on spec for Snow Leopard, I'm going to use it as an 'upgrade' test machine (I think the harddrive and superdrive are failing anyway, so it'll test those too)
 
Hmmm...

Wonder if anyone can help, I too have an external USB enclosure for my MBP and am looking to migrate to Snow Leopard (from Leopard) and upgrade hard drive at the same time.

However I don't wish to use the Time Machine method as I want a clean install (I come from a PC background and still think spring cleans are a good thing, I removed Parallels a few months ago and notice there is still the odd mention of it in places for instance).

I would also like to get everything working before butchering my MBP and changing the internal hard drive.

So I have connected the new HD via the the external USB and booted from the SL DVD installing a fresh copy and all has worked fine. I can boot from SL on the external USB whilst still having my original HD visable within the machine.

BUT when I run Migration Assistant and click "Continue" SL requests my admin password, which I enter then I end up back at the same click-to-continue screen. It appears that the Migration Assistant does not like something. I was hoping to install all my Apps by hand but wanted to migrate emails, key chain etc - does anyone have any suggestions?

Many thanks in anticipation.
 
Migration Assistant Doesn't...

I had exactly the same problem. My wife's MacBook Air just got a replacement HD installed courtesy of AppleCare. I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade her to Snow Leopard. Now that I've installed SL from the family pack, Migration Assistant exhibited exactly the same behaviour as described below.

The solution was to run the Migration Assistant directly from the Applications/Utilities directory of the new drive. Spotlight was picking up the Migration Assistant on the external (backup) drive, probably because it had been indexed and the new internal hard drive hadn't.

Stupid of me, but at least it's working now.


RicardoCoste said:
Hmmm...

Wonder if anyone can help, I too have an external USB enclosure for my MBP and am looking to migrate to Snow Leopard (from Leopard) and upgrade hard drive at the same time.

However I don't wish to use the Time Machine method as I want a clean install (I come from a PC background and still think spring cleans are a good thing, I removed Parallels a few months ago and notice there is still the odd mention of it in places for instance).

I would also like to get everything working before butchering my MBP and changing the internal hard drive.

So I have connected the new HD via the the external USB and booted from the SL DVD installing a fresh copy and all has worked fine. I can boot from SL on the external USB whilst still having my original HD visable within the machine.

BUT when I run Migration Assistant and click "Continue" SL requests my admin password, which I enter then I end up back at the same click-to-continue screen. It appears that the Migration Assistant does not like something. I was hoping to install all my Apps by hand but wanted to migrate emails, key chain etc - does anyone have any suggestions?

Many thanks in anticipation.
Click to expand...
 
EvanRobinson said:
I had exactly the same problem. My wife's MacBook Air just got a replacement HD installed courtesy of AppleCare. I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade her to Snow Leopard. Now that I've installed SL from the family pack, Migration Assistant exhibited exactly the same behaviour as described below.

The solution was to run the Migration Assistant directly from the Applications/Utilities directory of the new drive. Spotlight was picking up the Migration Assistant on the external (backup) drive, probably because it had been indexed and the new internal hard drive hadn't.

Stupid of me, but at least it's working now.
Click to expand...

That makes two of us! Many thanks :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back