MP 1,1-5,1 Trying to un-screw up my OS, apps, files etc.

[Ar0undth3fur]

So, I've got a bit of a weird issue going on. If you've seen my other thread "Sofa King Lost", I finally sorted out the GPU issue for my recording studio 4,1->5,1 machine.

I exclusively use older 32 bit programs (Cubase 7, Logic Pro X, Adobe CS5.1 Suite, etc.). My machine had 4 drives, 3 for storage, 1 for system/files. I ignorantly upgraded my OS to Catalina not realizing that would nix my 32 bit programs.

Once I realized what I had done, I backed up my stuff, and then messily reverted my system drive to Mojave. I didn't understand it at the time, but it seems when upgrading to Catalina/and or backing up my existing files, my main drive was split in 2, via a "container", one sub-drive for system and one for files. Not sure exactly how this happened, but I know my main system drive was operating off of a Time Machine backup for the OS.

Anyhow, that in and of itself was not an issue, my problem here is everything still worked on that drive/system - all the old 32 bit stuff worked no problem, even on Mojave.

My problem is I'm trying to move everything over to my new Samsung 870 which is on an Accelsior board in one of my PCI slots and start new. I thought that I'd simply be able to move all my programs over to a fresh Mojave install on that disk, and voila... the programs worked, but I was missing a lot of my 3rd party plug-ins for Logic/Cubase, something I wasn't having an issue with on the older disk. Back in the summer I had mostly sorted this out on another new SSD, but I can't remember exactly how I did it and I have been looking for a quicker and more direct fix.

Yesterday I tried restoring the "apps/files" from the Time Machine backup my old drive was operating off of. When it finished, none of my programs worked... not sure if there was some issue with them being on a disk that had been upgraded to Catalina, or corrupted or something, but the programs were for the most part suggesting I reinstall them. With most of these programs there are licenses involved (iLok USB, etc) and the programs weren't seeing them. Again, I don't have this issue on the old drive.

I have been trying to think of ways to simply "clone" the old drive to the 870, but not exactly sure how to do it. I formatted the 870 again today trying to see if I could use disk utility to copy the old drive over, but it's not allowing me to straight away... looking closely at everything, I had formatted the 870 to APFS previously, and the old harddrive was Mac OS Journaled, but the "container" was coming up "APFS"... I reformatted the 870 to Mac Os Journaled to see if that would help, but it made no difference.

Sorry if this all n00bish stuff, but I'm just a bit lost in terms of trying to get everything running how it was before. I'm sure I could just attempt another fresh OS install on the 870, reinstall the programs, cross my fingers and hope they work and the licenses populate... and THEN piece by piece move over all the other files and my plug-ins and what not... that's just a ton of work and I was looking for something more straight forward and less tedious... Given the above with my ass-backward old harddrive and the current state of my machine, is there no chance of a "1-fell-swoop" option for this...? I don't think any of my programs/files on the old hard drive are corrupted, everything still works when booting that drive... it just seems maybe there's some kind of disconnect either between files on different OS versions-drives, or the format of the drives involved.

Help!

 

[!!!]

but it seems when upgrading to Catalina/and or backing up my existing files, my main drive was split in 2, via a "container", one sub-drive for system and one for files. Not sure exactly how this happened, but I know my main system drive was operating off of a Time Machine backup for the OS.

This is normal for Catalina and later, the drive is split into two containers, one for the OS and one for user files, but this is supposed to appear transparent to the user. Unfortunately since previous OSes don't know about this they end up making a mess of things.

Once I realized what I had done, I backed up my stuff, and then messily reverted my system drive to Mojave.

Honestly at this point I would've recommended you wipe the drive and restored from your backup. I don't know what "messily" means, mind telling us what you did exactly?

I have been trying to think of ways to simply "clone" the old drive to the 870, but not exactly sure how to do it.

Another "fun" part of APFS systems is that you cannot clone them. In any case I wouldn't recommend this anyways, sounds like the partition itself is a bit messed up from Catalina.

What I would do is wipe the 870, format as GUID with HFS+ (I believe the Mojave installer might want to do the APFS itself). Make sure when you're doing this that you're selecting the root of the 870 in Disk Utility, View > Show All Devices in the DU menu. Apple stupidly decided to try and hide stuff from the user in disk utility which results in people reformatting partitions instead of the entire drive. Best to just start from scratch IMO, especially with past clone attempts.

Then, install Mojave as normal, and during the setup process choose to migrate your stuff from your other boot drive directly. I assume you will have both drives installed in the machine? This is the most reliable way to get everything copied over.

Yesterday I tried restoring the "apps/files" from the Time Machine backup my old drive was operating off of. When it finished, none of my programs worked

I experienced something weird like this too at one point, a restore from the TM backup resulted in none of my apps being functional. A boot drive migration solved this, it's the most direct possible. To solve the TM issue, you'll need to boot into the OS that's being backed up, enter Time Machine, right click the Applications folder, and choose "delete all backups of Applications". This will take a while but the next backup should contain fresh copies of your applications.

Once you've gotten everything transferred over and it works, I'd recommend starting a new TM backup of your 870, not inheriting the previous one. That would be the ideal way to avoid future corrupt backup issues. You may also look into products like CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper!, they can create copies of your boot drive which you can then migrate from. So kind of like a clone, but kind of not.

 

[reader50]

I clone drives with SuperDuper, and have heard good things about CarbonCopyCloner.

When used on Mojave or earlier, they do full clones, usually bootable.

On Catalina or later, SuperDuper clones only the "-data" volume, skipping the OS volume. The resulting clone is not bootable, but you can install macOS on top of the cloned copy. Resulting in a bootable system with all your stuff present. This is how I normally do OS upgrades, leaving my previous system intact. So I can boot back into it if anything goes badly in the new OS.

By default, Mojave insists on being installed to an APFS volume. Unofficially, Mojave will run fine from HFS+, but you need to use a modified installer, or clone from an install on APFS. If you installed Mojave originally from a normal Apple installer, than it was almost certainly running from APFS all along.

I haven't done much with pro apps, much less plugins for pro apps. It's possible they got tied to your boot volume name, and are refusing to run. A reinstall of the plugin should work, and resetting your volume name to the old name might be worth trying. Same about your user folder name (user name). If you changed that on a new install, your licensed apps and plugins may be expecting the old name.

 

[Snowlover]

Another "fun" part of APFS systems is that you cannot clone them.

I have used carbon copy cloner to make bootable clones of both Mojave and Monterey, and recloned them onto new/different ssd's with no problem.
Clones on Monterey can not be incrementally updated however, and erase the entire partition you are cloning to.

 

[Snowlover]

I have been trying to think of ways to simply "clone" the old drive to the 870, but not exactly sure how to do it."
I think this would be the simplest way forward. You can try carbon copy cloner for free for 30 days. Get version 5

Download CCC - Bombich Software

bombich.com

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

This is normal for Catalina and later, the drive is split into two containers, one for the OS and one for user files, but this is supposed to appear transparent to the user. Unfortunately since previous OSes don't know about this they end up making a mess of things.

Honestly at this point I would've recommended you wipe the drive and restored from your backup. I don't know what "messily" means, mind telling us what you did exactly?

Another "fun" part of APFS systems is that you cannot clone them. In any case I wouldn't recommend this anyways, sounds like the partition itself is a bit messed up from Catalina.

What I would do is wipe the 870, format as GUID with HFS+ (I believe the Mojave installer might want to do the APFS itself). Make sure when you're doing this that you're selecting the root of the 870 in Disk Utility, View > Show All Devices in the DU menu. Apple stupidly decided to try and hide stuff from the user in disk utility which results in people reformatting partitions instead of the entire drive. Best to just start from scratch IMO, especially with past clone attempts.

Then, install Mojave as normal, and during the setup process choose to migrate your stuff from your other boot drive directly. I assume you will have both drives installed in the machine? This is the most reliable way to get everything copied over.

I experienced something weird like this too at one point, a restore from the TM backup resulted in none of my apps being functional. A boot drive migration solved this, it's the most direct possible. To solve the TM issue, you'll need to boot into the OS that's being backed up, enter Time Machine, right click the Applications folder, and choose "delete all backups of Applications". This will take a while but the next backup should contain fresh copies of your applications.

Once you've gotten everything transferred over and it works, I'd recommend starting a new TM backup of your 870, not inheriting the previous one. That would be the ideal way to avoid future corrupt backup issues. You may also look into products like CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper!, they can create copies of your boot drive which you can then migrate from. So kind of like a clone, but kind of not.

As for what I meant about it being messy, originally I upgraded to Catalina, saw nothing worked, backed up the whole existing Catalina system to Time Machine to a different drive (so, originally of drives A, B, C and D, I upgraded my "A drive", then backed that drive up in Time Machine and stored that copy of it on my "D drive", best I remember). However, for some reason that D drive is listed as 10.9... I can't for the life of me remember how I got such an old OS on there, before I did the Time Machine and moving stuff around the drive was just spare storage space the best I recall.

Drive A is still listed as 10.15.7 (Catalina), but I somehow installed 10.14.6 on Drive D, and I am operating all of the very programs and plugins I want to preserve off of Drive D, which was "restored" off of a Time Machine back-up... (mind you, I had never used Time Machine before this point - I'm not even sure what exactly I backed up or reverted to off of Time Machine for Drive D - I don't think I had automatic back ups on there, I may have just been able to revert to my previous/recent update to 10.14.6 on Drive D, which salvaged my apps and plugins and stuff to Drive D. Currently Drive A (Catalina), is almost full @ 920 gigs out of 960, but none of my previous apps are in the apps folder, and a lot of stuff isn't showing up where it normally would - there's basically nothing of use (easily visible), it's just a Catalina OS, but it seems like it's attached to my Drive D in a weird way - that's pretty much what I mean by "messily" lol. For the record, previously, all of my drives were originally configured for Mac OS Extended Journaled, including all the SSDs (only Drive D was HDD).

I should note "Drive D" is a 2 TB HDD, currently running 10.14.6 and is formatted Mac OS Extended Journaled - I should also mention last night when trying to work with my 5th drive (the 870 on the Accelsior), I noticed it was formatted APFS, and thought maybe that was the reason when I did my "files only" transfer on Migration Assistant, that nothing was working. Also if I recall correctly, when I did copy everything over, I think it did it in the "container" format again... there was a split for OS and user files/apps... I'm not sure, everything's starting to blur together 🤦...

I pretty much already tried what you suggested earlier today - I formatted the 870 and redid it thinking I should reformat it as Mac OS Extended Journaled - so that copying ALL of those files (including OS and the whole 9) from Drive D to Drive E (the 870), would maybe work this time (since last night Drive E was formatted as APFS). From earlier today, that theory did not pay off, I kept getting error messages when I would attempt this. At this point I wasn't sure if it's because there's no existing OS on Drive E (the 870), or some other kind of issue. My next thought process was maybe I should reinstall High Sierra on Drive E with its current format type, then upgrade to Mojave, and try recopying what I need from Drive D via Migration Assistant (it's my understanding you must start with a copy of High Sierra to properly upgrade to Mojave...?).

So if I'm hearing you right, I should go into Time Machine, delete any/all current copies of App backups, then *RE*-back-up my current Apps/files to a fresh back up, and THEN try to migrate that to my 870 drive? I had briefly looked at some of those cloner apps earlier today, but they all seemed to demand purchase on a once over, and I wanted to see if there was a more direct, "built-in" method to solve this lol... but based on what you and others below have said I may need to get one that has a free trial to solve this. Thanks a ton for your feedback!

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

I clone drives with SuperDuper, and have heard good things about CarbonCopyCloner.

When used on Mojave or earlier, they do full clones, usually bootable.

On Catalina or later, SuperDuper clones only the "-data" volume, skipping the OS volume. The resulting clone is not bootable, but you can install macOS on top of the cloned copy. Resulting in a bootable system with all your stuff present. This is how I normally do OS upgrades, leaving my previous system intact. So I can boot back into it if anything goes badly in the new OS.

By default, Mojave insists on being installed to an APFS volume. Unofficially, Mojave will run fine from HFS+, but you need to use a modified installer, or clone from an install on APFS. If you installed Mojave originally from a normal Apple installer, than it was almost certainly running from APFS all along.

I haven't done much with pro apps, much less plugins for pro apps. It's possible they got tied to your boot volume name, and are refusing to run. A reinstall of the plugin should work, and resetting your volume name to the old name might be worth trying. Same about your user folder name (user name). If you changed that on a new install, your licensed apps and plugins may be expecting the old name.

Would you say using a cloner for my Drive D would be the best, easiest route to go for this matter? Would you suggest doing my own fresh OS install on my 870, then using the program to clone my Drive D to it so that I can retain what I'm trying to hold on to..? I'm assuming these cloners would have an option to clone everything but the OS...? Or would it be a "lump sum" clone of everything on Drive D, including the OS? That wouldn't be a problem for me, as long as it works. As I mentioned before, all of my Mac drives are and have always been Mac OS Extended Journaled - I guess when I did my downgrade and back up to my Drive D, either it automatically formatted that drive to MAC OS EJ, or was that be default since it was a HDD...? Either way, the OS on that drive is 10.14.6, which is perfect, so it stays consistent with everything else.

I don't have any understanding of these formats and their capability, are things interchangeable/useable/transferrable between APFS and MAC OS EJ drives...? Figured keeping everything the same is best in general. Is the fact that my Drive A Catalina OS (despite the drive being configured for Mac OS EJ) has a container in it that was formatted to APFS (I guess default by upgrading to Catalina) the or part of the reason why I'm catching grief?

I can't remember how I installed the previous OS's, but I believe I had to jump through a lot of "hoops" (checking/unchecking things and terminal commands) in conjunction with Apple OS installers to get from High Sierra to Catalina previously. Currently I've definitely been using Apple OS installers when trying to sort this out... are you saying if running from a Mojave OS installer, you don't have the option to keep the Mac OS EJ format..?

I hadn't thought of the boot volume name/user name in regards to the plugins... that's very possible. I do remember last night when trying to copy Drive D to the 870 via Migration Assistant, it asked if I wanted to copy the existing username/profile of Drive D to the 870, keep it as an additional profile, or (I think) just use the existing profile on the 870... perhaps that's an avenue to re-examine if retrying this thing instead of going through a cloner. Thanks a bunch for your insite!

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

I have been trying to think of ways to simply "clone" the old drive to the 870, but not exactly sure how to do it."
I think this would be the simplest way forward. You can try carbon copy cloner for free for 30 days. Get version 5

Download CCC - Bombich Software

bombich.com

Based on what I originally posted and my last few responses/details, would you say this is the best/easiest way to solve this? I appreciate your input!

 

[reader50]

If Drive D (with Mojave on HFS+) is working the way you want, and you just want to move it to your fast SSD (drive E) then go ahead and clone. Reformat your Drive E as either HFS+ (Mac OS Extended - Journaled) or APFS. Then use the free version of SuperDuper! to clone Drive D to Drive E. You can do this while booted from Drive D. This should result in a bootable Mojave on Drive E. I don't think it matters which drive format you use in your case.

About disk formats-
APFS is a more modern format. Supposedly gives better performance on SSDs, though I have not noticed a difference. I've heard a few exotic features in Mojave will not work properly if it's not on APFS. However, I ran Mojave from HFS+ for 2-3 years without seeing anything break.

APFS is more space-efficient when you have multiple volumes on a drive: the free space on the drive is available to all the volumes. Say you had Mojave, Catalina, and Monterey on the same drive. Instead of partitioning, and allowing some free space for each volume, the remaining space on the drive is available to all those volumes. This advantage is irrelevant if you put each volume on its own drive.

HFS+ (aka Mac OS Extended) is Apple's older disk format. It doesn't have every new feature, but it's bug-free. And works fine up through Mojave in my experience. If you own any 3rd party drive repair utilities, they currently only work on HFS+. As of this writing, I'm not aware of any 3rd party repair utilities that work on APFS. You're limited to Disk Utility.

Next time you upgrade to a later OS version, I suggest cloning to a separate drive. Update the new drive, and test things out. Keeping your existing install completely intact, so you can fall back to it if needed. This can save you a lot of grief.

 

[mattspace]

FWIW I honestly think the time savings of migrating to a new operating system are outweighed by the costs of the crud you bring with you.

I think it's a better option to have your mail kept on an IMAP server, iCloud for the Apple Synced stuff, use 3rd party automation tools like Hazel and Keyboard Maestro rather than Apple built in stuff like Folder Actions & Shortcuts, and keep a dedicated drive / partition that is only for stuff you need to be syncable locally - settings backups, screenshots of palette layouts etc, recreations of directory paths where settings are kept on the boot drive, and then just do fresh installs every time you want to go to a new system.

You can spend a day recreating your work setup from scratch from screenshots and syncable things in a fresh OS install, or you can spend weeks dealing with glitches from cruft or things not quite being right from a migration.

 

[!!!]

I have used carbon copy cloner to make bootable clones of both Mojave and Monterey, and recloned them onto new/different ssd's with no problem.
Clones on Monterey can not be incrementally updated however, and erase the entire partition you are cloning to.

These are not true clones, they're file copies. You can read up more about this stuff on CCC's blog. Basically, APFS partitions have some kind of ID associated with them and cloning breaks things. For newer versions of macOS though, you can't even boot off said drive, though you can use them with Migration Assistant. In any case I think these are undesirable for his current situation, it sounds like the install has some weird issues.

I pretty much already tried what you suggested earlier today - I formatted the 870 and redid it thinking I should reformat it as Mac OS Extended Journaled - so that copying ALL of those files (including OS and the whole 9) from Drive D to Drive E (the 870), would maybe work this time (since last night Drive E was formatted as APFS). From earlier today, that theory did not pay off, I kept getting error messages when I would attempt this. At this point I wasn't sure if it's because there's no existing OS on Drive E (the 870), or some other kind of issue. My next thought process was maybe I should reinstall High Sierra on Drive E with its current format type, then upgrade to Mojave, and try recopying what I need from Drive D via Migration Assistant (it's my understanding you must start with a copy of High Sierra to properly upgrade to Mojave...?).

It doesn't sound like it, as I said, install Mojave fresh on the 870 and then use migration asst. to copy the files from Drive D.

No, you shouldn't need to first install HS. Again, I don't remember if the Mojave installer still wants it to be HFS+ first, or if it will install directly on an APFS drive. Either way, just try it, it'll tell you.

So if I'm hearing you right, I should go into Time Machine, delete any/all current copies of App backups, then *RE*-back-up my current Apps/files to a fresh back up, and THEN try to migrate that to my 870 drive? I had briefly looked at some of those cloner apps earlier today, but they all seemed to demand purchase on a once over, and I wanted to see if there was a more direct, "built-in" method to solve this lol... but based on what you and others below have said I may need to get one that has a free trial to solve this. Thanks a ton for your feedback!

Using the TM interface, yes, delete all backups of Applications. Then just tell TM to start a backup. I always recommend having a backup before "doing things". But as I said, boot drive migration is best. Obviously if the TM backup works as expected there shouldn't be any issue.

And again, the method I outlined tells you exactly what you can do without purchase of other software. Those were just side thoughts since it sounds like you rely on this machine and maybe wanted extra assurances. Again, just secondary stuff you might want to look into after you get your drives sorted out. You could use those to 'clone' your drive, but that doesn't put you in a better position, it doesn't help you at all right now.

However, for some reason that D drive is listed as 10.9... I can't for the life of me remember how I got such an old OS on there, before I did the Time Machine and moving stuff around the drive was just spare storage space the best I recall.

Drive A is still listed as 10.15.7 (Catalina), but I somehow installed 10.14.6 on Drive D, and I am operating all of the very programs and plugins I want to preserve off of Drive D, which was "restored" off of a Time Machine back-up... (mind you, I had never used Time Machine before this point - I'm not even sure what exactly I backed up or reverted to off of Time Machine for Drive D - I don't think I had automatic back ups on there, I may have just been able to revert to my previous/recent update to 10.14.6 on Drive D, which salvaged my apps and plugins and stuff to Drive D

Honestly I can't make heads or tails of how your system is set up. Sounds like something is messed up somewhere if it's reporting that 10.14 is 10.9 somewhere. Maybe some borked Recovery HD?

Which is, again, why I'm suggesting a fresh install of Mojave onto the 870, then using Migration Asst. to copy everything over from the drive.

Cloning might bring over these issues, which is why I did not recommend it. A fresh install will leave the system in correct shape and the migration assistant will copy over all the user files exactly as they appear, without touching system files.

FWIW I honestly think the time savings of migrating to a new operating system are outweighed by the costs of the crud you bring with you.

He's worried about his logic plugins & licenses. iCloud and IMAP don't really help him. The only reason he's in so much trouble is due to some weirdness trying to restore after he learned Catalina wasn't for him. Migration Assistant won't copy over system file weirdness but it will copy over pretty much everything else identically, and that should take him less than a day and be far less work than trying to set up everything manually.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

These are not true clones, they're file copies. You can read up more about this stuff on CCC's blog. Basically, APFS partitions have some kind of ID associated with them and cloning breaks things. For newer versions of macOS though, you can't even boot off said drive, though you can use them with Migration Assistant. In any case I think these are undesirable for his current situation, it sounds like the install has some weird issues.

It doesn't sound like it, as I said, install Mojave fresh on the 870 and then use migration asst. to copy the files from Drive D.

No, you shouldn't need to first install HS. Again, I don't remember if the Mojave installer still wants it to be HFS+ first, or if it will install directly on an APFS drive. Either way, just try it, it'll tell you.

Using the TM interface, yes, delete all backups of Applications. Then just tell TM to start a backup. I always recommend having a backup before "doing things". But as I said, boot drive migration is best. Obviously if the TM backup works as expected there shouldn't be any issue.

And again, the method I outlined tells you exactly what you can do without purchase of other software. Those were just side thoughts since it sounds like you rely on this machine and maybe wanted extra assurances. Again, just secondary stuff you might want to look into after you get your drives sorted out. You could use those to 'clone' your drive, but that doesn't put you in a better position, it doesn't help you at all right now.

Honestly I can't make heads or tails of how your system is set up. Sounds like something is messed up somewhere if it's reporting that 10.14 is 10.9 somewhere. Maybe some borked Recovery HD?

Which is, again, why I'm suggesting a fresh install of Mojave onto the 870, then using Migration Asst. to copy everything over from the drive.

Cloning might bring over these issues, which is why I did not recommend it. A fresh install will leave the system in correct shape and the migration assistant will copy over all the user files exactly as they appear, without touching system files.

He's worried about his logic plugins & licenses. iCloud and IMAP don't really help him. The only reason he's in so much trouble is due to some weirdness trying to restore after he learned Catalina wasn't for him. Migration Assistant won't copy over system file weirdness but it will copy over pretty much everything else identically, and that should take him less than a day and be far less work than trying to set up everything manually.

I definitely would like to go the route you’ve laid out, sounds the most direct and ideal.

Only questions are if the Mojave OS do indeed install APFS (unless there’s a way to change that to Mac OS EJ) will there be any conflict with trying to copy files from my Drive D drive which currently is formatted Mac OS EJ…? Are files useable/transferable between those 2 formats…? Is it just a matter of space/file management between those to protocols?

Another question was regarding a new TM backup I could make… I noticed you did not suggest trying to restore the new 870 drive from a full Time Machine backup… is that because you suspect there could be corruption/quirks carried over to the new drive by going that route…? Or is it because an OS cannot be properly installed to a new drive from an TM backup…? And instead recommend a fresh Mojave install, and transfer of everything else via Migration Assistant…? One of the things I noticed when trying to the MA method last time (asides from the error messages I mentioned) was the error message in an Arabic looking language for Adobe Illustrator when trying to open it on my 870 drive… of all things. No idea how that happened.

Thanks a bunch for all the help, you guys are great!

 

[mattspace]

He's worried about his logic plugins & licenses. iCloud and IMAP don't really help him. The only reason he's in so much trouble is due to some weirdness trying to restore after he learned Catalina wasn't for him. Migration Assistant won't copy over system file weirdness but it will copy over pretty much everything else identically, and that should take him less than a day and be far less work than trying to set up everything manually.

No, but you can copy across the stuff in ~/Library and /Library specific to those apps, especially if you use something like Chronosync to get proper metadata-intact copies.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

So, I kind of figured out what's going on a little more clearly... "Drive A", which was my original system drive with everything on it that I want to retain, was the one I updated to Catalina. I created "some kind" of backup of that drive to Drive D... if I recall, I think I may have put an OS (currently Mojave on it), and then perhaps backed up the documents/files from the Drive A to that Drive D... When I tracked down the directory of all my working apps (which I incorrectly thought before were being ran out of Drive D), they show up in Drive A... it seems I need to try and figure out a way to copy those files on Drive A, to the new Drive E (870), if possible. Not sure if a simple "drag and drop" or cloning would work, but obviously I want grab whatever I can off of Drive A, save for any system stuff.

When I went into Time Machine to try and see what my options were, Drive A showed up as an existing drive, but was not allowed to be used as a device to back up from when attempted to move to that process based on the fact that it was running a newer OS… I'm wondering if I need to log into that drive, create a new backup as suggested, then log back into Drive E, and see if I can either use Time Machine or Migration Assistant to move those desired files back into Drive E...? Or is the fact that that system currently is stuck on Catalina going to be an issue? I'm really hopeless when it comes to how Time Machine works, however I feel like we're close to figuring out what to do to square this away.

I have done a fresh Mojave install on Drive E, it did work without needing High Sierra before it, despite what I had previously been told.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

The new Mojave install did go in as APFS as it as predicted, btw (despite having the drive formatted as Mac OS EJ).

 

[!!!]

Only questions are if the Mojave OS do indeed install APFS (unless there’s a way to change that to Mac OS EJ) will there be any conflict with trying to copy files from my Drive D drive which currently is formatted Mac OS EJ…? Are files useable/transferable between those 2 formats…? Is it just a matter of space/file management between those to protocols?

No, there shouldn't be. You can even "upgrade" an HFS formatted drive to APFS.

The only potential issue I can see is if for some reason one of the drives is formatted as case-sensitive. Neither of them should be, especially as you have Adobe software which does not work with CS filesystems.

Another question was regarding a new TM backup I could make… I noticed you did not suggest trying to restore the new 870 drive from a full Time Machine backup… is that because you suspect there could be corruption/quirks carried over to the new drive by going that route…?

Since you did mention weirdness with apps I suspected there may be something wrong with your TM backup. Which is why I suggest creating a brand new backup once you have everything set up on the new drive. With a TM backup you're involving the extra step of first copying it to the TM drive, then copying it to the new boot drive. Whereas with MA you're copying from the old boot drive to the new boot drive.

Or is it because an OS cannot be properly installed to a new drive from an TM backup…?

No, you can restore from a TM backup and it should be bootable, as long as TM didn't exclude system files. You can also use MA to migrate from a TM backup.

One of the things I noticed when trying to the MA method last time (asides from the error messages I mentioned) was the error message in an Arabic looking language for Adobe Illustrator when trying to open it on my 870 drive… of all things. No idea how that happened.

Sorry, you didn't mention any specific error messages.

So, I kind of figured out what's going on a little more clearly... "Drive A", which was my original system drive with everything on it that I want to retain, was the one I updated to Catalina. I created "some kind" of backup of that drive to Drive D... if I recall, I think I may have put an OS (currently Mojave on it), and then perhaps backed up the documents/files from the Drive A to that Drive D... When I tracked down the directory of all my working apps (which I incorrectly thought before were being ran out of Drive D), they show up in Drive A... it seems I need to try and figure out a way to copy those files on Drive A, to the new Drive E (870), if possible. Not sure if a simple "drag and drop" or cloning would work, but obviously I want grab whatever I can off of Drive A, save for any system stuff.

Ok, it sounds like you want apps from drive A, and user files from drive D? So you should use MA to migrate from drive D to your new 870 Mojave install, then a drag and drop of the apps from A to your 870 Mojave should work.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

No, there shouldn't be. You can even "upgrade" an HFS formatted drive to APFS.

The only potential issue I can see is if for some reason one of the drives is formatted as case-sensitive. Neither of them should be, especially as you have Adobe software which does not work with CS filesystems.

Since you did mention weirdness with apps I suspected there may be something wrong with your TM backup. Which is why I suggest creating a brand new backup once you have everything set up on the new drive. With a TM backup you're involving the extra step of first copying it to the TM drive, then copying it to the new boot drive. Whereas with MA you're copying from the old boot drive to the new boot drive.

No, you can restore from a TM backup and it should be bootable, as long as TM didn't exclude system files. You can also use MA to migrate from a TM backup.

Sorry, you didn't mention any specific error messages.

Ok, it sounds like you want apps from drive A, and user files from drive D? So you should use MA to migrate from drive D to your new 870 Mojave install, then a drag and drop of the apps from A to your 870 Mojave should work.

Actually, I pretty much want everything from Drive A (except the OS of course). This whole time I was incorrectly thinking that the apps I was using were on Drive D, since that’s where I directed my TM backup to… but in reality I was still using apps and plugins and licenses stored on Drive A it seems.

I pretty much need to figure out a way to get just what I want off of Drive A… do any of these cloning programs have options for omitting the cloning of OS and system files…? Wouldn’t a clone of the apps and other files from Drive A onto the fresh Mojave install on the 870 do the trick?

 

[Snowlover]

I read through all the details since my last post.
To sum thing up, it turns out you weren't running 32 bit apps from drive D, but from drive A, with files stored on drive D.
You managed to get a clean install of mojave onto the new ssd, and want the apps from drive A and files from drive D on the ssd , drive E.

!!! Suggested: "So you should use MA to migrate from drive D to your new 870 Mojave install, then a drag and drop of the apps from A to your 870 Mojave."

My only question with this would be that apps moved with drag and drop would probably not have their license registration intact. I believe this is what happened when you originally tried restoring the apps from time machine.

Is your A drive running Mojave?
If so, you can use CCC to clone the A drive to drive E,
( and can selectively leave out the user files , since you want those from drive D). This will ensure the license registrations will be intact.

As I said in my first post, I have done this many times , and my Adobe apps were ready to use with no issues.
And the cloning issue with apfs isn't a problem with Mojave, it started with later macos versions when the system was locked and separate from user container.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

I read through all the details since my last post.
To sum thing up, it turns out you weren't running 32 bit apps from drive D, but from drive A, with files stored on drive D.
You managed to get a clean install of mojave onto the new ssd, and want the apps from drive A and files from drive D on the ssd , drive E.

!!! Suggested: "So you should use MA to migrate from drive D to your new 870 Mojave install, then a drag and drop of the apps from A to your 870 Mojave."

My only question with this would be that apps moved with drag and drop would probably not have their license registration intact. I believe this is what happened when you originally tried restoring the apps from time machine.

Is your A drive running Mojave?
If so, you can use CCC to clone the A drive to drive E,
( and can selectively leave out the user files , since you want those from drive D). This will ensure the license registrations will be intact.

As I said in my first post, I have done this many times , and my Adobe apps were ready to use with no issues.
And the cloning issue with apfs isn't a problem with Mojave, it started with later macos versions when the system was locked and separate from user container.

Drive A is still Catalina, so that’s kind of a bit of a hold up I think.

I haven’t checked yet to see if all of my files that I tried to back up with TM are *only* on Drive D… I need to check the Data side of Drive A to confirm.

To summarize, you think MA transfer of files from Drive D to Drive E will be fine, as well as simply dragging and dropping all my apps from Drive A to Drive E? Would that be better or just use a cloner for everything (or just one or the other?). If using a cloner, is there a way in any/all of those apps to tell it to omit OS and system files when cloning…?

 

[Snowlover]

Not that I know of.
Are you able to run your 32 bit apps on any drive anymore? That would be the one to clone from.
Try the drag and drop for the apps and see about the licenses. Can you re-register the licenses if needed?

 

[Snowlover]

Just been doing a bit of reading and it seems you will at least have to re register and possibly reinstall if you drag and drop the apps to the new ssd. You may need to deauthorize on the old drive first.

 

[Snowlover]

I just reread this thread again.
It seems you do have a functional mojave installed on drive D, with all apps and plug ins working. Is this correct?
Are the 32 bit apps installed on drive A or drive D?
If installed on drive D, I would just use CCC to clone from that to your E drive. Format doesn't matter, apfs or hfs+.
If they are on drive A and somehow joined with drive D, I really don't know what else you can do but drag and drop, try migration assistant , or fresh install the apps and re register the apps if necessary.

This is one of the reasons why I prefer backing up via clones vs time machine.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

Not that I know of.
Are you able to run your 32 bit apps on any drive anymore? That would be the one to clone from.
Try the drag and drop for the apps and see about the licenses. Can you re-register the licenses if needed?

Yes, when logged into Drive D (Mojave), I can run my 32 bits apps that are still on Drive A (Catalina). I suppose I could try logging into Drive E (New 870, with Mojave), and seeing if I can #1. Run those apps that exist on the A drive and #2. Drag and drop them from the A drive onto E (I don’t believe I’ve tried that, if I recall I was pulling everything off of Drive D before).

As for the licenses, not entirely sure how they work, my Adobe suite and Cubase were legit purchases, my Logic and plugins I have, meh… some were “given” to me… so anything that’s not “legit” is not linked to an iLok or other kind of license file, it should just be a matter of copying the files over. I’m assuming that’s where copying all the other files off of Drive A (non system stuff) would take care of that if not recertify everything.

Just been doing a bit of reading and it seems you will at least have to re register and possibly reinstall if you drag and drop the apps to the new ssd. You may need to deauthorize on the old drive first.

That might be in some circumstances… however, IIRC correctly a few months ago I tried the very same thing on my E drive (I think it was on High Sierra still because at the time I was battling things out with a FirePro W9000 trying to get it to work and wasn’t fully committing to an OS or fix for the issues in this thread) - I tried a similar thing where I copied all apps and files over, and was IIRC I was able to get everything to work (save for maybe just a few of the dozens of plugins I didn’t do correctly or find all the files for)… I can’t remember how I did it, or what I copied from where and how, but it was done. I obviously ended up wiping the drive since then, hoping there was a more straightforward, “one or 2 clicks” kind of solution instead of navigating hundreds of directories looking for all the pieces to complete a complicated puzzle…

I just reread this thread again.
It seems you do have a functional mojave installed on drive D, with all apps and plug ins working. Is this correct?
Are the 32 bit apps installed on drive A or drive D?
If installed on drive D, I would just use CCC to clone from that to your E drive. Format doesn't matter, apfs or hfs+.
If they are on drive A and somehow joined with drive D, I really don't know what else you can do but drag and drop, try migration assistant , or fresh install the apps and re register the apps if necessary.

This is one of the reasons why I prefer backing up via clones vs time machine.

Yes, just for simplicity and explanation sake let me lay it out again a little more neatly:

Drive A: Former system drive with all important apps, licenses and operative files on it (Catalina OS)
Drive B: Storage
Drive C: Storage
Drive D: The drive I used to TM back up parts of Drive A after fubar’ing everything when upgrading too far to Catalina, the backup exists on this drive, but seems to pull everything from Drive A when trying to use apps that “exist” on Drive D..? (Mojave OS)
Drive E: NEW 870, desired location for all new system files, apps, licenses etc. (Mojave OS, NOT going to upgrade any newer so I can continue to use 32 bit stuff)

And somehow, one of those drives (has to be either B or C), shows up in Startup Disk as like 10.9.5 or something, not sure how, don’t think it really has any relevance, but a detail nonetheless.

It seems there are copies of my apps on D, but within a series (couple instances or something) of TM backups, which were made from the A drive (kind of odd, because those are 32 bit apps existing on a non-supportive OS in Catalina, which also still work so long as you’re not actually logged into Drive A…). I will go into the machine tomorrow to test and examine some more things now that I’ve been able to get a better grip on what’s what… ugh what a confusing mess.

As for where to move, what, from, I know I’m getting grief when trying to move stuff from Drive D to E… however like mentioned above I was able to move stuff in such a way before to get things to work on another drive (it may not have been E before, but it was certainly one that was not A or D), and more than likely I copied the files from my A drive if I had to guess at this point. I can still reinstall Cubase and the Adobe suite no problem… although at least my copy of Cubase will require figuring out how the hell to sort out the iLok and license and all that… I think my copy of Logic doesn’t give me any grief when simply moving it… however, there’s a ton of plugins and 3rd party stuff that Logic and Cubase share that I just want to “be there” when I ultimately move all this stuff for good… nothing’s more annoying than opening up a recording session that had dozens of instances of a plugin and you get a message for each plugin that can’t be found on the machine/unsynced with the DAW…

In a nutshell that’s what I’m trying to solve here lol… just want to move my stuff, and be done with it… relocate and sort out files where they need to go, then wipe the unused drives to be used elsewhere (I have 2 new 2TB 850 drives I’ve got waiting on the side to replace my Crucial 960GB SSD Drive A, and Hitachi 2TB HDD Drive D). So, 2TB 870 for system on Drive E, with drives A-D being 2 TB 850s in each slot… I’ve built a pretty bitchin’ machine that I’m STILL trying to finish piecing together! Only thing left I can conceivably do is try and cram another WX 7100 in there for more screens, and hopefully figure out how to make some Noctua fans play with the machine. I am sooo ready to start using this machine again for some music/video making.

Thanks once more for your assistance, this is a great board!

 

[mattspace]

I’m assuming that’s where copying all the other files off of Drive A (non system stuff) would take care of that if not recertify everything.

Just as a thought for identifying all the files an app needs, if you want to reconstruct an app by moving it to a new system; AppCleaner has the ability to find pretty much every file an app installs on your system so that it completely removes apps. You chould use that while running the old OS to identify the files you need to copy to the new install of an OS, if you need to do that.