Transfer from Mojave Beta to new MacBook Pro: how?

[DanEp]

I am running Mojave Beta on a MacBook Air and just purchased a new MacBook Pro. How can I safely transition everything to MacBook Pro? Should I register MacBook Pro in Public Beat program, install latest Mojave Beta on the MacBook Pro and then run Migration Assistant? What if I want to keep MacBook Pro on latest non-Beta release?

Any advice much appreciated.

 

[TMRJIJ]

I am running Mojave Beta on a MacBook Air and just purchased a new MacBook Pro. How can I safely transition everything to MacBook Pro? Should I register MacBook Pro in Public Beat program, install latest Mojave Beta on the MacBook Pro and then run Migration Assistant? What if I want to keep MacBook Pro on latest non-Beta release?

Any advice much appreciated.

Did you have a Time Machine backup from before you installed Mojave Beta?

 

[DanEp]

Did you have a Time Machine backup from before you installed Mojave Beta?

I don’t think so. And if I did it will be weeks old.

 

[DanEp]

I don’t think so. And if I did it will be weeks old.

Any other way? What about bringing new MacBook Pro to same Beta release that my MacBook Air is on after registering it in the Public Beta program and upgrading it? I could then run the Migration Assistant. Will this work?

 

[gilby101]

Will this work?

The usual rule is that you can install any version of macOS which is released AFTER the first release of the hardware. There is not yet a public beta released after the hardware (I am assuming you do mean the new MBP model and not just a new MBP.).

I would register the new MBP in the beta program and patiently wait for the next public beta.

 

[afir93]

There are reports that the current Mojave beta is not yet compatible with the new MBP models, meaning there's currently no way to install Mojave on them. I would however expect that to change in the next beta which might be coming next week. So as gilby101 said, you'd either need to register your MBP aswell and wait for a compatible PB release, or if you can't wait so long, you could always transfer your files and stuff over manually from your MBA (via File Sharing for example) or from a Mojave Time Machine backup (manually locating the desired files in it and copying them over would still work).

 

[DanEp]

There are reports that the current Mojave beta is not yet compatible with the new MBP models, meaning there's currently no way to install Mojave on them. I would however expect that to change in the next beta which might be coming next week. So as gilby101 said, you'd either need to register your MBP aswell and wait for a compatible PB release, or if you can't wait so long, you could always transfer your files and stuff over manually from your MBA (via File Sharing for example) or from a Mojave Time Machine backup (manually locating the desired files in it and copying them over would still work).

I don't need Mojave running on the new MBP. How can I move my daily used MBA running Mojave back to High Sierra? I just want all of my data etc. transferred from my MBA which happens to be running Mojave (more for fun than any practical reason). I have not backed up the MBA for a couple of weeks.

Is there any way to move the MBA off of the Beta back to High Sierra without losing weeks of data so I can use Migration Assistant?

 

[TriBruin]

Your best bet is to a do a semi-clean install. Setup your new Mac and then transfer your Home directory from the old computer to the new computer. You will need to re-setup your preferences and install all your applications, but you would have all your files. I would suggest you put the MBA in TargetDisk mode to copy file.

 

[DeanL]

By the way, the 2018 MacBook can't be restored from Internet Recovery yet...

 

[DanEp]

By the way, the 2018 MacBook can't be restored from Internet Recovery yet...

So when the public beta is released (tomorrow, probably), I can: register my new MBP in the public beta program and upgrade it to the public beta, install the latest public beta release on my old MBA (already running beta) and then run the migration manager to transfer everything over? Any glitches I should watch out for (I know, it is beta!)?

 

[Fishrrman]

All reports so far indicate that Mojave will not yet run on the brand-new 2018 MBP release.

My advice:
Steer clear of it, until you have seen reports from others that they have it running successfully.

I WOULD NOT recommend installing Mojave as your "primary OS" in any case.

Install it on an external drive for test purposes only.

 

[dBeats]

unplug the external drive that you installed Mohave onto, reboot the machine back to your internal drive with High Sierra on it. Wait, you did install the beta on an external drive and NOT your main internal drive right?

 

[steveaburns]

I would look at using something like Carbon Copy Cloner... install it on Mojave on your MacBook Air. Attach an external HD to the MacBook Air, and clone Mojave onto the external disk. Attach the external disk to your MBP 2018, and boot from the external disk (hold down option on boot, and pick the external disk). Now on the MBP 2018 booted from the external HD, get the Carbon Copy Cloner beta that works with Mojave, and clone onto the MBP internal SSD.

 

[TriBruin]

I would look at using something like Carbon Copy Cloner... install it on Mojave on your MacBook Air. Attach an external HD to the MacBook Air, and clone Mojave onto the external disk. Attach the external disk to your MBP 2018, and boot from the external disk (hold down option on boot, and pick the external disk). Now on the MBP 2018 booted from the external HD, get the Carbon Copy Cloner beta that works with Mojave, and clone onto the MBP internal SSD.

Very doubtful that would work. The current (until today) beta version of Mojave did not have the required kexts for the new models. All this would have done is left him with an non-bootable MBP.

However, Apple did release a new Public Beta to download. It "probably" supports the 2018 MBPs. If one is so inclined to run Beta software.

 

[themp]

Wait, Mojave is a hot mess on new MBP.

 

[k2corc]

I am running Mojave Beta on a MacBook Air and just purchased a new MacBook Pro. How can I safely transition everything to MacBook Pro? Should I register MacBook Pro in Public Beat program, install latest Mojave Beta on the MacBook Pro and then run Migration Assistant? What if I want to keep MacBook Pro on latest non-Beta release?

Any advice much appreciated.

Wondering how this worked out for you? I am running the public beta on my old 2013 retina MacBook Pro, but am picking up the new 15" tonight. Should I downgrade back to High Sierra, back up with time machine, and then transfer over to the new machine?

 

[DanEp]

Wondering how this worked out for you? I am running the public beta on my old 2013 retina MacBook Pro, but am picking up the new 15" tonight. Should I downgrade back to High Sierra, back up with time machine, and then transfer over to the new machine?

I would recommend you do that. I’m having all sorts of problems on the new MBP after transferring the beta using the migration manager. I waited for the new beta release, installed beta on the MBP and then my old MacBook Air running the previous beta and then used the migration manager to transfer.

 

[k2corc]

I would recommend you do that. I’m having all sorts of problems on the new MBP after transferring the beta using the migration manager. I waited for the new beta release, installed beta on the MBP and then my old MacBook Air running the previous beta and then used the migration manager to transfer.

Just an update for anyone else following or finds themselves in this same situation:
I picked up the new 2018MBP today and asked the Apple Store employee his recommendations for how to transfer over the data. Whether I should downgrade to High Sierra or try installing Mojave beta on the new one.

He said that I wouldn't need to do anything, Time Machine should work just fine with Migration Assistant (first set-up mode) regardless of the OS version. WRONG!

Migration assistant doesn't even allow you to select the Time Machine backup made from the Mojave beta (old computer) on the new computer, since the new ones are shipping with High Sierra at the moment. It says that the Time Machine backup was created using a newer MacOS.

Idea 1: Install the Mojave beta on the new 2018MBP so that they are both running the same OS. Then, I should be able to run Time Machine just like normal. Didn't work. After installing Mojave on the 2018MBP, I entered the Migration Assistant (desktop app mode this time) and tried to bring over all the data. No idea what happened, but the process didn't bring over any files at all. No documents, no users, no library files, nothing happened. Even after a restart.

Idea 2: Right now I am backing up my old machine once again with Time Machine (thank god I didn't delete a thing). The migration process attempted in idea 1 must've screwed up the backup, and there was a prompt saying once you decide to backup the new 2018MBP to this Time Machine, the old computer would not be able to access it.

My process now will be to revert my old 2013 MBP off of Mojave and back on to High Sierra, which I can tell is going to be a real b***h. I am going to make a third copy of important files (basically my entire documents folder) just to be safe because I don't really trust the process.

If all goes well with the downgrade to High Sierra and all files are present, then I will simply restore my new 2018MBP back to factory settings (which is also High Sierra) and run Migration Assistant from the initial set-up.

.....

If anyone has attempted this downgrade and has some pointers, please feel free to share. Won't be going at this until tomorrow evening. For now, I just plan on going off of an article found on Google.

..........

Hopefully a positive update tomorrow!

 

[themp]

Whatever you do, make sure you turn off all of the secure boot features using recovery mode. I don't think there is a recovery image for Mojave yet that works on the 2018 MacBook Pros (or a high Sierra one for that matter) and if you erase the disk without turning off secure boot, you may brick the computer.

 

[k2corc]

Update for everyone: You're basically screwed if you're running the Mojave beta on the old machine. I had made a Time Machine backup before installing the public beta, but it became inaccessible once I plugged into the new machine upgraded to the beta as well. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT DELETE OR GET RID OF YOUR OLD SYSTEM BEFORE SETTING UP NEW ONE.

I wound up just manually copying over all my files to the new Mac. My documents and iCloud items (notes, calendar, mail, reminders, and phtotos) were a piece of cake. Super easy to transfer and/or download from my iCloud. Apps are also an easy CC or App Store download.

Two biggest pain points were Keychain and Messages. I didn't want to lose all my saved up passwords and log-ins, so manually transferred these over into Keychain. Took some research, but this seems to be the best way. For some reason, my iCloud Keychain doesn't store everything I need in there. Messages are something that wouldn't really matter if I lost, but would make things easier if they transferred over. Spent a good hour or so with Apple support chat trying to figure it out, and turns out the Mojave beta archives messages in a different way than it did in High Sierra and years previous. All of my messages just wound up transferring over, but I don't know if this was from me Enabling iCloud Messages or dumping the old Library files. Both methods didn't produce a result after doing so and restarting, they just kinda popped up hours after the fact. If anyone stumbles upon this thread in the future, feel free to quote me and I'll dive into what I did for these.

All in all, I probably cleaned up my machine quite a bit of useless stuff accumulated over the years, but would have loved it to go smoother. Finally running full speed ahead on the new 2018 MBP and will never trick myself into trying the beta ever again.
[doublepost=1532753431][/doublepost]

Whatever you do, make sure you turn off all of the secure boot features using recovery mode. I don't think there is a recovery image for Mojave yet that works on the 2018 MacBook Pros (or a high Sierra one for that matter) and if you erase the disk without turning off secure boot, you may brick the computer.

Not sure what the secure boot feature is that you're mentioning, but a simple formatting to APFS and then re-install of High Sierra did the trick. This part went pretty smooth relative to the entire process.

 

[stevespa]

Update for everyone: You're basically screwed if you're running the Mojave beta on the old machine. I had made a Time Machine backup before installing the public beta, but it became inaccessible once I plugged into the new machine upgraded to the beta as well. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT DELETE OR GET RID OF YOUR OLD SYSTEM BEFORE SETTING UP NEW ONE.

I wound up just manually copying over all my files to the new Mac. My documents and iCloud items (notes, calendar, mail, reminders, and phtotos) were a piece of cake. Super easy to transfer and/or download from my iCloud. Apps are also an easy CC or App Store download.

Two biggest pain points were Keychain and Messages. I didn't want to lose all my saved up passwords and log-ins, so manually transferred these over into Keychain. Took some research, but this seems to be the best way. For some reason, my iCloud Keychain doesn't store everything I need in there. Messages are something that wouldn't really matter if I lost, but would make things easier if they transferred over. Spent a good hour or so with Apple support chat trying to figure it out, and turns out the Mojave beta archives messages in a different way than it did in High Sierra and years previous. All of my messages just wound up transferring over, but I don't know if this was from me Enabling iCloud Messages or dumping the old Library files. Both methods didn't produce a result after doing so and restarting, they just kinda popped up hours after the fact. If anyone stumbles upon this thread in the future, feel free to quote me and I'll dive into what I did for these.

All in all, I probably cleaned up my machine quite a bit of useless stuff accumulated over the years, but would have loved it to go smoother. Finally running full speed ahead on the new 2018 MBP and will never trick myself into trying the beta ever again.
[doublepost=1532753431][/doublepost]

Not sure what the secure boot feature is that you're mentioning, but a simple formatting to APFS and then re-install of High Sierra did the trick. This part went pretty smooth relative to the entire process.

I can confirm this to be 100% true. I used migration assistant to transfer to my new MBP (both on Mojave), and had no end of grief. Ended up formatting, going back to High Sierra (which was still a big PITA), and copying all the data from the old computer to the new one.

Stay away from Mojave on the 18 i9 MBP!