I have a friend's iMac which he had Apple replace the hard drive in. The old hard drive worked but was slow and apparently they told him that it was failing. He wants to restore the old system onto the new drive, but I don't have a firewire enclosure to use with the old hard drive, only USB ones. Do I have any options? My thought is that I'm going to have to install the old drive back into the computer, perform a time machine backup, and then swap the drives back to restore from TM. Is there anything else I can do so I don't have to disassemble this iMac twice? It's one of the newer ones that are a huge pain in the ass to pull apart.
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Target disk mode over USB?
- Thread starter cameronjpu
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You can use Setup or Migration Assistant to migrate data off of the old HDD during reinstallation of Mac OS X.
Migration Assistant / Setup Assistant information:
Other than that, the only options are a Firewire enclosure or putting the HDD back into the iMac.
OR
I just remembered, you could boot from the old HDD while in its USB enclosure (a bit slow, but workable), install CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper! on the old HDD and clone the contents of the old HDD to the new HDD (properly formatted*).
*
Migration Assistant / Setup Assistant information:
Setting-up a new Mac from an old one, its Backups, or a PC
which includes:
which includes:
- Using Setup Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard
- Using Setup Assistant on Lion
- Using Migration Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard
- Using Migration Assistant on Lion
- Transferring files from one User Account to another
- Transferring Home Folders not on a Startup volume
- Transferring Applications
- Problems after using Migration Assistant
Other than that, the only options are a Firewire enclosure or putting the HDD back into the iMac.
OR
I just remembered, you could boot from the old HDD while in its USB enclosure (a bit slow, but workable), install CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper! on the old HDD and clone the contents of the old HDD to the new HDD (properly formatted*).
*
It will bring over applications AND settings AND documents, if you choose to.
The links I provided were not for show, they are actual guides on how to either use Migration or Setup Assistant or explanations what CCC and SD! actually do.
Yep, I clicked them, read a few and didn't see the answer to my question. Thanks for using words instead of just links. I know how frustrating it is when someone asks a follow-up question when you think the thousands of words included in your links should have answered the questions, but sometimes a specific answer is preferable to a link. Thanks!