Migrate or Restore?

Hi, I currently have a MacBook air running 10.6.2. I just got a new 13" MacBook Pro (unibody) and I'm switching machines. (needed more hard drive space/speed). I have a complete back up on my Time capsule. Am I better off using the restore function from the back up or Migration assistant? I'd like to just lift the lid on the new machine and for everything to be the same. (I think)
Is there anything I should do prior to moving over? Which method should I use? Do I need to do anything with user names or permissions? (I had permissions **** for MONTHS after the last machine change.) Any advice is greatly appreciated, Thank you.

Your options are either ethernet or wireless, Sonia. Ethernet is quicker.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3322 and http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1896 provide some more useful inormation
You can actually use migration assistant directly from the time machine back-up instead if you wish.the help file provides basic instructions.
If you chose this route the quickest way would probably be over ethernet rather than wireless, too.
Cheers
Rod

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Data Migration Vs restore using backup

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Migration Assistant restore of Time Machine backup is incomplete

Some app, I don't know which one, keeps messing up the disk drive catalog structure, forcing me to wipe the drive and do a complete restore. I just had to do it again today (third time in a year), but this time Time Machine isn't restoring the user accounts, only the applications.
A random check of the user accounts shows they've been fully backed up on the Time Machine drive and they show up in Migration Assistant as accounts that can be transferred, but they're not transferring. I'm getting no errors from Migration Assistant, it just finishes with the applications and says my files have been transferred.
Any ideas?

I had the same problems when migrating from Time Machine (same computer but the hard drive crashed so I replaced one). During the migration, I created a new user account for the TM backup because of the same account name with my new system. I found only the applications are migrated, all other things like user accounts, preferences and settings, documents etc are not transferred; and I'm not allowed to manually open backup documents. How can I deal with it?

Migration Assistant restore of Time Machine backup

I have problems using Migration Assistant to restore Time Machine backup after replacing my hard drive (the old hard drive crashed so I replaced one and installed snow leopard). During the migration, I created a new user account for the TM backup because of the same account name with my new system. The migration turned out to be incomplete. I found only the applications are transferred, all other things like preferences and settings, documents etc are not transferred; and I'm not allowed to open my backup files (no permission to view the contents). How can I have a complete migration? And can I restore all my previous personal settings?
Thanks!

Then can I transfer my previous settings especially those of Mails, Safari bookmarks, iTunes music... using Migration Assistant anyway?
You should be able to, but I'm not sure exactly what might have gone wrong in your case.
I'm afraid I may not be able to restore the entire system b/c the service center replaced my hard drive and installed the Snow Leopard, but I don't have the installation disk, I only have a Leopard I bought months earlier, the Time Machine backup is the leopard version.
If you don't have a Snow Leopard install disk, you shouldn't try to keep Snow Leopard installed. You shouldn't use a Leopard install disk for troubleshooting problems on a Snow Leopard system, so you have no troubleshooting tools. Just follow the directions at that link I gave you (at step c, you should reformat the hard drive), using your Leopard disk, to get Leopard and all your data restored from your backup.
If you want Snow Leopard, buy a copy (it's only $29) and install it over Leopard after you've got everything working.
The hard drive crashed this morning without any precaution. Do do you think I can still do the restore?
Well, what do you mean when you say "the hard drive crashed"? Seems odd that Apple would have replaced your hard drive and installed a clean system, only to have it fail again shortly after you get it back. Not that that couldn't happen, it's just odd. What exactly happened?

Why Migration or Restore Utility doesn't find any Time Machine backups from Time Capsule ?

Hello,
After a big issue on my system (Lion), I had to do a full restore from Time Capsule and my problems started.
Here is my setup:
Time Capsule configured with account-based authentication
MacBook with OS X Lion (x2) (1 needs a restore)
I booted from Lion's restoration partitions, then I selected "Restore from Time Machine backup", my Time Capsule is detected. I hit "Continue", the utility asks my login/password. Then...nothing ! It seems that no backup is detected.
Well, from another computer, I tried to connect with the same login/password and mount the sparsebundle backup...no problems
To go further, I launched Migration utility from the working computer, then tried to restore from Time Machine backups....no backup is detected again !
Solution:
I had, from Lion's restoration partition, to mount the Time Capsule drive, then the sparsebundle image (the backup) from Terminal.
After that, the restoration utility was able to detect the "local" mounted sparsebundle backup image.
Aftermath:
Not a single Apple utility, designed to restore my computer, was able to detect my Time Capsule's backups.
I was able to use the command line utility to be able to restore my computer.
Question:
Did I miss something ? Am I the only one to do that to restore from a Time Capsule configured with account authentication ?

I'm sorry I didn't get your point. I didn't find any answer in this FAQ.
For the record, I checked my backups with Disk Utility, no damages were found, so it should work out of the box.

Time Machine after Migration Assistant restore

During vacation, my MacBook pro’s hard disk suffered directory corruption so bad that neither Disk Utility nor DiskWarrior could repair it. I knew I had a recent Time Machine backup at the office, so I just reformatted my hard disk, reinstalled, and was up in running again in a few hours.
When I returned from my holidays, I used Migration Assistant to restore everything from the Time Machine backup, including users, applications, preferences, and other data.
I experienced several problems:
1. The Mac is bound to an Active Directory domain. After restoring users using Migration Assistant, domain users could no longer log in. I had to unbind and re-bind the Mac to the domain before domain logins worked again.
2. The newly re-installed and restored Mac no longer recognized the Time Machine backup as being a backup of itself. This caused additional problems because when I enabled Time Machine again, it tried to make a full backup, saw that there wasn’t enough space on the disk, and deleted all but the most recent backup from the Time Machine volume.
3. Migration Assistant failed to restore several very important files, including:
a. Finder preferences and desktop layout
b. Mail preferences, including accounts and signatures
c. Keychains, including passwords to WiFi access points and web sites
d. VPN settings
e. The Stickies database
f. Some Address Book contacts
g. The iTerm.plist file (from ~/Library/Preferences)
h. Lotus Notes Data (from ~/Library/Application Support)
i. Other application preferences & data
I was able to locate some of these files in the single remaining backup on my Time Machine volume. However, some were simply gone. The iTerm.plist file, for example, was nowhere to be found. This file contained several dozen customized iTerm commands that I will have to reconstruct from scratch.
4. Ever since restoring from backup, Mail has exhibited a problem wherein it sometimes displays the wrong message. It doesn’t do this with all messages; only some. For example, if I select the most recent message in my inbox right now, a message received in June is displayed in the preview pane instead.
Has anyone else observed problems like these? Is there any hope of recovering the backups that Time Machine saw fit to delete?

Pondini wrote:
Michael Lowry wrote:
2. Time Machine does not recognize old backups as being from the same computer if the Migration Assistant method was used to restore the computer.
Not exactly, but the result is nearly the same. When you erased the internal HD, it got a new UUID, so to OSX it's a different drive, and everything put back on it was considered as new, and Time Machine backed it up.
Ah, ok. So if I understand correctly, it was the fact that I reformatted the drive, and not the particular method I used to restore, that led to Time Machine deleting most of the backups. Is that right? I still find it very odd that right after restoring from a backup, the system doesn’t recognize that very same backup.
I suppose if I had investigated the matter more carefully and spent a few hours reading on the web, I might have learned about some properties file inside the backupdb where I could have manually tweaked the UUID after reformatting. But honestly, how would I have known this? I thought I did things according the proper procedure. When Disk Utility was unable to repair the drive, it displayed specific instructions to back up my files (done), reformat, reinstall, and then restore from backup. When I followed these instructions provided by Disk Utility, my Time Machine backup was rendered unrecognizable, and most of my backups were deleted without warning.
Moreover, I wonder again: how would a less knowledgeable user experience this?
I gotta say, this process could be made more user-friendly and the instructions & warnings clearer.
The iTunes Library was not restored.
Was it in the default location (the +<your home folder>/Music+ folder)?
I found the original iTunes Library on the backup disk; I restored these files manually and that fixed iTunes. All of the music had already been restored successfully. And yes, my library was in the ~Music directory.
Once I’d made iTunes happy, I was able to sync my iPhone. This brought back the missing Address Book contacts, because they were on the phone.
The Mail database appears to be irretrievably corrupted. I have no confidence any more that clicking on an item in the list will actually display that item.
Have you tried +Mailbox > Rebuild+ from the Mail menubar?
I hadn’t seen that option. That fixed it. Thanks!
This was my first time relying on my Time Machine backup, and I must say I am not satisfied. I work in IT and consider myself a power user; I hate to think how a less expert user would experience this situation. So much for “it just works.”
Ordinarily it does; this is quite unusual.
I'm a retired IT guy, and learned many years ago that all hardware fails, sooner or later, and no backup app is perfect, so I always recommend keeping (at least) secondary backups. It's not any help now, of course, but you might want to check out #27 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) for some suggestions.
I’m not sure I will continue using Time Machine. I like the advantages (multiple versions, integration into some apps, nice UI); but I don’t know if they’re worth much if the backup is not reliable as a system backup. I wonder if an incremental Carbon Copy Cloner backup wouldn’t be better for my needs. A CCC backup would also give me one additional benefit: it would be bootable, virtually eliminating downtime and facilitating quick repair and restoration.
Thanks again for your suggestions. They have been informative and helpful.

Migration Assistant Restore From TM

Can an older TM backup be used by the Migration Assistant to restore the Home Folder or does it only use the most recent TM backup? How does one choose a particular TM backup for the Migration Assistant to use if, in fact, that is possible?

When using MA you can select from whatever Home folder backups are available depending upon how far back TM has maintained the Home folder.
For more help see Apple - Support - Discussions - Time Machine -- Frequently Asked Questions.

Migration assistant restore problem with time capsule

Hi People,
I have the weirdest of all problems. Let me explain what happend and you will be as amazed as I am now.
======
I have been using a 2TB time capsule for about a year and a half now. Every day for 18 months everything was being backupt. Everything smooth no problem.
My 27" iMac needed a fresh install at home because I have been upgrading from SL to Lion and thing got a bit odd. So this is what I did in a nut shell.
1. Bought a new 27" iMac Quad core with 12 Gb ram etc. (I bought it for my office)
2. At home started up the new iMac and the migration assisant asked me what I wanted.
3. Did a full restore from the TC and all my user data was restore to the new iMac!
=== Hurray so far, evrything worked liked it should.===
This was my test, now I was confident to erase my "old" iMac and do a full Lion reinstall and then use migration assisant to restore all files.
It worked with the new iMac so nothing to loose.
So I erased the new iMac, boxed it again and took it to the office.
Now It was time for my old iMac to be reinstalled.
=====
4. So I erased my "old" iMac.
5. Did a clean Lion install from DvD.
6. Did all software updates (as I had done with the new iMac).
7. started Migration Assistant
8. Pointed to the time capsule and did everything like the day before
9. Got an error message.
=====
***?? I tested this it should work. Now ALL my data is gone. All my movies, honeymoon, kids growing up, etc etc etc etc.
Everything gone gone gone!
So now I can browse to the TC and see the sparsebundle file. It is 1.5TB. I can show package contents and see the files, I can go into the "Bands" dir. and see a bunch of files. But I can not repair, mount, use disk utils with the sparsebundle.
The data must be in the 1.5 Tb file but I have no way of accessing it.
I need some good advice / help from someone because my whole family history is gone at this moment .

Woxxxxxx wrote:
My 27" iMac needed a fresh install at home because I have been upgrading from SL to Lion and thing got a bit odd.
That's usually the last thing to try. Depending on what was wrong, simply installing a fresh version of OSX would be likely to fix it. If not, finding and addressing the actual problem would probably be much better than starting with the "nuclear" option.
5. Did a clean Lion install from DvD.
6. Did all software updates (as I had done with the new iMac).
7. started Migration Assistant
It's much better to use Setup Assistant when your Mac first starts up after installing OSX, to prevent Problems after using Migration Assistant.
9. Got an error message.
Was that the "some backups cannot be opened" message? If so, try to repair them, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

HT4889 Will migration assistant restore previous settings to a new mac?

I had a hard drive crash which required replacement. The tech shop reinstalled OS 10.6.8 for me and I want to use my Time Machine backup to restore all of my files, settings, bookmarks, etc. I have used Migration Assistant and done a restore but nothing has changed, although I know files were transerred from the backup. What am I doing wrong?

Migration Assistant will restore the user accounts that existed previously. Did it create a new account for the one on the old drive?
Are you trying to restore it back to 10.8?

Migration Assistant crashes when I try to restore from previous system bckp

When I first started up my new MacBook Pro and arrived at the Migration Assistant screen, I selected 'TimeMachine' backup, but the Installer freaked out and took me back to the language selection screen.
I have since tried doing the same thing in Utilities - Migration Assistant, but after a long period of MA 'calculating size' and then showing (briefly) the two users on my last system, it crashes.
I suspect there is a problem with the external drive that I have the Time Machine backup on. I got my MacBook Pro two days ago, and the first thing I did was Software Update, so there shouldn't be any conflicts going on.
Does anyone have any suggestions? My life is on the external drive, and the thought of losing files and settings is really making me sick.

try repairing the external drive (not permissions) with disk utility.
if migrating using MA doesn't work still doesn't work after that you have no choice but to do manual migration by restoring things you need by hand. see this link for a list of things to restore in your home directory.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6185507
to restore by hand from TM drive control-click on TM in the dock and choose "browse other TM disks". this will let you access your old TM drive in browse mode.

How do I migrate from one user to another to resolve sleep/permissions issues?

My MacBook Pro's been having several issues, mainly with waking from sleep. I've tried Repairing Permissions, Repair Disk, running tools like OnyX and Drive Genius, but they can't find any issues. I checked the Console log, and there was some sort of denial from displaying the login window after I woke up from sleep.
Initially I thought this had to do with some of my peripherals being plugged in when I already had the lid closed; the Mac would wake up, not realize the lid was closed, and never go back to sleep. Nothing--keyboard or trackpad touches--would wake the machine up. I'd have to hard reset by holding the Power button on.
I had an Apple Genius suggest that I create a new user and test it out with the (same) default sleep settings as the buggy user account. It wakes up from sleep lightning fast, and has thus far never had any issues.
I'm leaning toward sticking with this new user and migrating over my things bit by bit, to try and avoid potential permissions issues. But since I don't know where the source of this sleep problem lies, how should I go about it?
I've read through Pondini's Transfer Guide here http://pondini.org/OSX/Transfer.html, but I'm just wondering where people would start, knowing that the machine has had permissions issues with some files. (The permissions issues, btw, I believe were caused by a mangled Time Machine restore. I replaced my internal HD with another one, but the Time Machine/Migration Assistant restore wasn't complete. I did it a second time from within the user account that got created, then tried to delete the malformed one and rename the complete one, but that's when the issues started.)

I wasn't intending to move the entire home folder, rather, moving things like what's inside my Documents folder in chunks.
From what I read, tracking down the origin of sleep/wake problems on a computer is notoriously hard, especially if Disk Utility and similar tools don't give any clues during Repair Disk or Repair Permissions. Creating the new user seemed to help, but I don't know why that alone would "fix" anything, so I haven't moved any files as of yet nor done anything with the new user account.
Trying to move the things from my Library folder to my desktop also seems a bit risky; it's hidden in Lion and Mountain Lion because a lot of system files are there, right? Wouldn't moving them cause problems, not just help me find what file/folder (if any) could be the culprit?

Issues with Time Machine File Restore Permissions and Interface

Hi All,I bought a Time Capsule in January 2010, and i've had backups since then.
Time Machine's interface has pretty much always been laggy as ****, but I've always put that down to using it over wifi, perhaps that was a wrong assumption.
Anyway, I went to open a folder in a virtual machine which resides in my mac's documents folder, and it wasn't there. Sure enough this folder wasn't in my documents folder, so I thought i'd restore it from time machine. Time machine shows every segment as a pink fully coloured one (signalling theres a backup there) for a few secs, before most of them turn into a pale pink. Looking into the issue further, it seems as though I don't have permission to access the documents folder on a lot of backups, by looking at the users/brett/ folders on them (which i do have access to), right clicking on the restricted folder shows that everyone has no access, and it's fetching the other user. Trying to add myself to it doesn't work.
I have gone through two MBPs with the same backup set, and a number of hard drives (the latest being a SSD I put in yesterday, and the migration assistant restore from time machine worked without skipping a beat - never had a problem doing full restores or migrations, just using the interface)
Obviously the easiest thing to do would be to start afresh, but I'd rather not as I'd lose 2 years worth of backups, and who's to say this wouldn't just happen again in the future? Could this be why the interface is so slow too?
Thanks guys

studentguy wrote:
Time Machine's interface has pretty much always been laggy as ****, but I've always put that down to using it over wifi, perhaps that was a wrong assumption.
Yes, there is a lot going on to "populate" the display -- it can be sluggish even to a FireWire 800 drive.
Looking into the issue further, it seems as though I don't have permission to access the documents folder on a lot of backups, by looking at the users/brett/ folders on them (which i do have access to), right clicking on the restricted folder shows that everyone has no access, and it's fetching the other user. Trying to add myself to it doesn't work.
I don't do Windoze, so am not familiar with the structure of the VM files, or how the permissions on them work. Many folks exclude them from Time Machine, and back them up separately.
I have gone through two MBPs with the same backup set, and a number of hard drives (the latest being a SSD I put in yesterday, and the migration assistant restore from time machine worked without skipping a beat
Yes, because it simply copies whatever permissions are there. It doesn't need to (and shouldn't) check whether the logged-on user has permission to anything.
Could this be why the interface is so slow too?
It could be a contributor.
Can you set the permissions on the VM files on your Mac so everyone has read rights? That should at least allow you to restore their backups.

Migration Assistant/ Set-up Assistant/ Copy and Paste/ Other?

Hello Wise Ones,
I have just installed a new HD and am wondering how to transfer my old files, a sparsebundle/image, from an external HD to this brand spanking new HD.
For context,
1) Acquired an external HD.
2) Saved a File Vaulted account onto that HD (Western Digital HD; used WD Smartware).
3) Upgraded from Tiger to Snow Leopard.
4) Time Machine backs up the information of Guest account but not the main account, the Filevaulted account.
5) Rigamarole follows, but sparsebundle/image becomes mountable and files accessible.
6) Internal HD fails.
7) New Internal HD installed just yesterday.
8) Migration Assistant restores the Guest account files. But the sparsebundle/image is not an option.
So, as it stands now I have two accounts on the computer: the newly created account and the migrated old (Guest) account. I seem to have all of the programs I think I should have. But, as you might imagine, my Documents, Movies. Pictures etc folders are empty.
The external HD shows me all of my created files. So, if need be I can just copy and paste those Documents, Movies, Pictures, Desktop folders, yes? (Alas, Migration Assistant doesn't -- um, pickup, recognize -- that sparsebundle/image.)
But what of the inner workings? Most notably, what of a Library folder. I see it there on my sparsebundle/image. It appears to be on the same tier as the Documents, Desktop, Movies folders. Meaning, I'm guessing that this Library folder is personal to this account, not to the computer as a whole. Therefore, if I select my account found on the new HD and find its Library folder, and then paste over it with this sparsebundle/image Library folder then all will be okay? Thus I'll have all of my mail messages/inboxes and all of my Safari Bookmarks and other goodies?
So, um, the best way to proceed? Migration Assistant; Set-up Assistant; Copy/Paste; or other?
Thanks again for your insights and patience.
Lex
P.S. Would it matter that the the sparsebundle/image folder has an account name that is different than the name for this new drive and this new personal account? So, damaged HD was named Lexy. But sparsebundle/image account has the name Lex. With this new HD the HD is named, Smith and the personal account is named LexSmith.

Not sure about the File Vault password protected thing is the problem with migrating. If you have room on the drive, try opening up the image and copy the user account from the image file straight to the drive itself, thereby eliminating the use of the image. Then try the migration.
Other than that, I can only suggest manually copying the files from each folder to your new user folder.
If it's your whole user account and it's a different name than the user account on the new computer, you might try to copy the whole user account over to the user folder and then see if you can switch user to that account.

Continue failed client migration

Hello,
I am trying to find info about what to do if our client migration (for example from XP to 7) failed during OS image applying, for example because of power failure. We have 2 TS: one for migration using SMP and one for migration using hardlinks. TS saves
users files to SMP or locally and imaging fails. What need I to do to restart migration and restore previously captured files? I suppose what I need to copy both TS and disable step (group) which captures user files. If migration fails, I run copy of TS
with disabled capturing (using PXE), it installs system and restores user files. If computer damages, I can create computer association in the console and files will be restored on the new computer. Will it work? Is it good practice? Or I need to manually
install a new system and use loadstate.exe to restore files?

Hi,
You could refer to the following blog, especially the
Computer associations part.
http://www.scconfigmgr.com/2013/11/27/configmgr-2012-the-replace-scenario/
(Note: Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support.
This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.)
Best Regards,
Joyce
We
are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this
interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time.
Thanks for helping make community forums a great place.

Migrate or Restore?

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