Upgrading: Migration Assistant & External Firewire Drive w/ Image

Hello, and thanks in advance for your guidance with this inquiry! I am considering upgrading from my PowerBook 12" to a current MacBook Pro 13": If I back up the PowerBook to an image via Disk Utility or SuperDuper and onto an external firewire drive and restore it there, will I be able to then use Migration Assistant to transfer that data to the MacBook-or can Migration Assistant be used only to transfer data directly between the two laptops? Thanks again so much, and a quick reply is especially appreciated since I may be selling my PowerBook tonight! : )
Best Regards,
Robert

Migration Assistant offers the option of migrating data from "Another volume" or something like that, which includes external hard drives. I used that option to migrate data from an external USB drive to my daughter's new unibody MacBook last December, when it proved impossible to migrate directly via Ethernet or FireWire connection from her old Powerbook running Panther. We cloned her internal drive to the USB drive using SuperDuper, and then the migration from that drive worked flawlessly.

Similar Messages

Upgrading: Migration Assistant with FireWire or Time Machine Restore?

Hello,
I recently ordered a new Black Penryn MacBook to replace my 17" iMac. Would you recommend using the Migration Assistant with FireWire or a Time Machine restore in order to copy all of my data to the MacBook? I have the option to do both, but am unsure of which would be the best. Is the time machine restore more suited to restore a failed drive as opposed to facilitating a data transfer between two machines? Finally, regarding either of the transfer options, will there be any issues with keychain or application data that I should be aware of? Thanks for your help!

Those are two of the option presented by Migration Assistant. I think the end result will be the same. If I was doing it, I'd use the FireWire method, just because it's coming directly from the source instead of through a backup archive structure.

Migration Assistant - External Hard Drive

Hi - I am trying to use Migration Assistant on a MacBook Pro to transfer my files from a La Cie external hard drive - which has all my files backed up from a 2005 mac book (photos, music etc) The migration assistant does not recognise the LaCie Hard Drive although it is connected to the MacBook via a cable and I can see the Hard Drive & associated files on the desk top.

Here's a link to Kappy's Basic Guide for Migrating to Intel Macs:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350&tstart=0
I'm not sure that Migration Assistant would be the best choice for what you want to do.
Good luck!

How do I back up my Boot Camp partition to external firewire drive?

I have a 15 GB Windows XP Boot Camp partition (FAT32). I want to back it up to a 120 GB external Firewire drive. (I know the backup won't be bootable). In OX X Disk Utility, I formatted the external drive as MS-DOS (FAT). I planned to do the backup using the Windows Backup utility.
However, when booted into WinXP, Windows will not recognize the external hard drive. I thought I might need to create a FAT32 partion of 32 GB or less on the external drive, but I apparently can't do this in OS X or Windows (since Windows doesn't recognize the drive).
Any suggestions on how to backup the Boot Camp partition will be appreciated. I'm mainly interested in preserving all programs and data. Ideally, a clone could be created that could be restored back to the original partition in bootable form, but from studying this and other forums, it dosn't seem to be easy to do this for a FAT32-formatted volume.

My goal was to create a bootable clone of my FAT32 Boot Camp partition, while at the same time increasing the size of the partition from 15 GB to 32 GB if possible. This is what I did:
1. As suggested in this thread, I used Disk Utility to create a disk image. I formatted it as MS-DOS (FAT), and made it 32 GB in size.
2. Used the Finder to copy all files from my 15 GB Windows XP partition to the new disk image.
The following steps were only to determine if the disk image is a viable backup:
3. Removed the internal hard drive with my original Win XP partition, and installed a new internal hard drive.
4. Used Boot Camp Assistant to create a 32 GB Boot Camp partition on the new internal drive.
5. Inserted my Win XP installation disk and started the Windows installation. Formatted the new partition as FAT32. (I used the long rather than the quick format method--not sure if this was necessary.)
6. Continued the Windows installation to the point of restarting the computer, at which time I used the Option key to boot back into OS X.
7. Used the Finder to copy all the files from the 32 GB disk image to the new Boot Camp partition. (This overwrote a few Windows files installed by the aborted Win XP installation.)
8. Restarted and used the Option key to select the new 32 GB Boot Camp Partition. Windows booted as usual with all files, programs, etc. from the original 15 GB partition. Windows did complain about "new hardware" and required a restart, but all appears normal.
This indicates that the disk image containing all the files from my original Boot Camp partition is a viable backup, and can be used to restore the partition if necessary. I'm not sure if formatting the disk image as MS-DOS (rather than Mac OS extended) was necessary, or not.

How to reestablish connection to external FireWire drive with iTunesLibrary

Hello all. Here's the scenario I would like help with, please:
I currently have a G5 Dual 2.0 GHz PowerMac running Leopard 10.5.1 and iTunes 7.6 . I have my iTunes library of tunes on an external FireWire Drive. I expect to purchase a Mac Pro soon. I expect to use Migration Assistant to pull files from my G5 over to the Mac Pro. Good so far.
Everything I've read about having ones iTunes songs on an external drive always starts with the assumption that the iTunes songs are currently on ones internal drive. In my case, as you can see, that is not the case. Given that I already have my songs on an external drive, that I'll have a new computer with things in their default positions (unless Migration Asst. pulls over my iTunes preferences including iTunes songs location), how, then, can I make sure the new iTunes app on the new Mac Pro "sees" where my music already exists?
Thanks for any help you might give. I'd like to be able to get iTunes working properly from day one on the new Mac Pro without iTunes problems.
Wayne

Thank you Airsculpture. What you laid out is the exact procedure I have used in the past. For some reason I thought switching to a new OS on a new computer might complicate things further. Glad to see that is not the case.
I appreciate your help!
Regards,
PWRMAC

Trouble with installing 10.5 from an external firewire drive

I have a family pack of 10.5 and installed it just fine on my macbook. But, I'm having trouble getting my imac DVD player to read the DVD. It just spins and spits it out, and spins and spits it out. The imac is not covered under applecare so spending money to get the DVD drive fixed (which I barely use) is not something I want to do right now.
Anyway, I followed instructions on a this website to install 10.5 from an external firewire drive. (http://iuseapple.com/blog/apple-how-to/advanced-os-x/2007/10/29/how-to-install-l eopard-from-external-firewire-hard-drive/)
But I get stuck and am not able to actually get my imac to boot from the installer. Basically, I am able to use disk utility to create a copy of the disk image on my macbook. That resulting file ends in ".cdr" and it mounts when I double click it.
And I partitioned my firewire hard drive without problems.
I think I'm messing up when it comes to doing the restore. If I try to drag the .dmg mounted file in to the "source" it doesn't work (is greyed out). If I try to drag the mounted .dmg there than it works, but I get an error when I click "restore" (something about scans and images not being found). I tried physically copying the .dmg file onto the partition, but then when I plugged the HD into my imac, I wasn't able to get the imac to boot from the installer.
What am I doing wrong? If someone could walk me through these last steps I'd appreciate it!

Okay I finally got around to creating the bootable disk image of 10.5 using Carbon Copy Cloner. Still my iMac is not booting from the firewire drive!
Here's a recap of everything I've tried. I'm at a complete loss now!
- I partitioned the HD into 2 partitions-- a 10gig one for the 10.5 install, the then the rest for Time Machine. I make the partition in Disk Utility on my MacBook.
- I've partitioned the drive a few times-- always partitioning it in APM format (b/c it needs to boot my non-intel iMac).
- I've created the disk image using "restore" in disk utility. I've again tried this a few times.
- I am able to boot my MacBook from the disk image I create! So I know the FW drive is able to be used to boot from!
- Here's what I've tried in terms of getting the iMac to boot from the FW drive. It always just boots to my internal drive instead. Sometimes I briefly see a folder and question mark. I've tried all 3 FW ports. I've selected the install partition at start up in preferences. I've also held down the option key at start up (only my internal drive shows) and I've held down command-option-shift-delete and again I get the question mark and it boots to my internal drive.
- And I installed Carbon Copy Cloner and made the disk image that way on my macbook. Still, I tried everything and the iMac is not able to boot from the firewire drive!
Since my DVD drive is broken, this is the only way for me to install 10.5! Help!

External Firewire Drives Not Working...huh!?!?!?

last night, everything was fine...
this morning, my two external firewire drives don't work. one is an acomdata, and the other is a western digital. neither drive will mount on any of my four macs (powerbook g4, two powermac g4s, and an ibook g3).
like i said, last night both drives worked fine...today (just a few hours later), neither of them work. any ideas?

just upgraded to 10.4.10...still nothing. i don't get it, but i really need the contents of these drives. what could have happened while i was sleeping? all four computers and both drives were turned off over night...man.

Can WinXP be loaded and booted from external firewire drive?

The subject line probably says it all but:
Does the recent firmware upgrade and/or BootCamp allow you to install WinXP on an external Firewire drive rather than partitioning the iMac Core Duo's internal drive?
Mike
Intel iMac Mac OS X (10.4.6)

The other problem is XP itself doesn't support booting from firewire. Even if someone could figure out how to install to an external from bootcamp, you would still have to contend with XP.
Glor

External Firewire Drives Don't Mount.... i need a guru.

Warning!!!!!
i'm going to ramble....
2 much sake .. heh heh
i just got a brand butt spanking new iBook G4 14" 1.42 GHz
Tiger pre-installed.
I ran Software Update. As you can tell by my info, i'm at 10.4.2 now.
In a minute i'll tell ya how i got BACK to 10.4.2 from 10.4.5
When i got my iBook I didn't plug my external firewire drives in until (about 2 days) after my update. So when i did get around to building my iTunes library, well, no luck.
My firewire drives would and do NOT mount!
By the way these particular peripherals are Western Digital firewire
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/stdadp.php?p_faqid=694&pcreated=1036793224
and AcomData Combo USB 2.0/Firewire
http://www.acomdata.com/hdp/fs.html
drives.
With a little exploration you'll find (at least i did) that they do not have firmware or driver updates for Mac. ( if you find them i'll give ya praise!)
The AcomData drive mounts with USB but not with firewire. The thing that
creeps me out is that my 3rd Gen firewire enabled iPod mounts right up no prob!
Another thing that ties me in knots is that these drives WILL MOUNT on my iBook12" running 10.3.9, as well as my old 5cH00L iMac DV 10.3.9!!!!
I thought it might be the Update so i did a clean install with the dvd provided by Apple and now i'm back to 10.4.2 but still no luck.
I've tried repairing permissions, starting, restarting, rebooting, plugging, unplugging, Updating, Downgrading, standing on my bloody head, looking all over the dotcom.
i swear i did all this with my peripherals unplugged.
i caught wind that though these companies may not provide updates for Mac, if i were to find out the companies that make the "chipsets?" within these drives that i might have luck.
i can't figure out what kind of "chipsets" (Oxford?) are in these drives or what to do if i knew anyway!
exhale
i still believe i have the best machine on the planet right now but .......
i need a guru.
help.
much obliged,
Clive
 G4 iBooks. iMac DV (graphite). gen 2,3,5 iPods Linux on the Pod too! Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Hi, Clive.
Here is some general troubleshooting advice that may help:
(1) Review the AppleCare Knowledge Base document "What to do if your computer won't recognize a FireWire device".
(2) If this problem occurred after installing a recent Mac OS X Update, and you are also unable to mount CDs, DVDs, or disk images perform the steps in this Mac OS X Hints article.
(3) The following additional steps will often help resolve problems with FireWire devices, particularly hard drives:(a) Power-on the FireWire drive before starting up (booting) your Mac.
(b) Reset PRAM and NVRAM.
(c) Reset the PMU or SMU: In the case of your iBook, I believe the article you want is "Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit (PMU)." You can also check the manual that came with your new iBook.
(d) Try a different FireWire port. James Wiebe, CEO of WiebeTech, has published FireWire Port Failures in Host Computers and Peripheral Devices, a white paper providing backgroud information and technical analysis concerning the causes of failure for FireWire ports. This may provide additional diagnostic information.Note that some of the information above is from the "FireWire Problems" chapter of my book, Troubleshooting Mac® OS X.
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Blue Screen Result When Installing To External Firewire Drive

I can't afford to have problems with programs not running on Leopard on my 17" G4 1.67 GHz 2 GB RAM PowerBook so I am trying to install it on an external Firewire drive. I was hoping to test out Leopard with certain applications by running it from the external drive.
The Firewire drive has two partitions, one has my backup clone of the PowerBook and the other just has files and about 35 GB of free space. The installation would be a new installation so none of the files that deal with login or Application Enhancer that are being talked about in other threads are an issue.
My first attempt to install brought up a blue screen after the installation restart. I left it there for about 30 minutes then powered off the PowerBook by holding down the power button. I started it again and held down the option key, picked the install disk as startup, went through the disk utility repair disk (found no problems). After that I picked the new install on the external from the startup preferences and it simply restarted to a blue screen. I left that one for about 20 minutes then powered down.
I went back to the Powerbook Tiger OS system, deleted all the installed folders on the external and tried a completely new install. Once again it went to the blue screen after the Leopard install restart. This time I left it overnight and this morning the display was dark and upon waking it up with a tap of the space bar was greeted by the bluescreen again.
I talked to my Apple hardware rep who knows the equipment that I am working with and we talked about all the steps I went through and he has no explanation why it won't work on the external.
I would love to hear from anyone that may have insight for this particular external FW drive installation perspective.

Joe-
Is the drive partitioned to APM? (Sorry I took Anton's reply to be yours.) What was the type fo partitioning onthe disk with the success? I am not knowledgable enough in those error messages on the system.log file, but one thought is - after the memory upgrade, did you clear the PRAM (long shot, but do it anyway)? The machine booting on one external Firewire drive (#2) implies the problem is with the external FW disk (#1) you are using. Some other people had the bus error, but with Time Machine. (Not to go on a tangent, but TM seems to have problems when the disk name has non-alphanumeric in it.)
Hoping someone who knows the syslog errors and the boot sequence will pipe in here.

Audio cutting out when using D2 external Firewire Drive

Hi,
I have just upgraded to Logic Studio, using the following setup:
Macbook Pro
Motu 828
AMT 8
Logic Studio
D2 Lacie 500GB Firewire Drive
As the MacBook's internal hard drive is not sufficient to record and playpack efficiently, I was advised to get an external Firewire Drive. Given that I have very little space on my laptop - (am running windows on a partition also) I am trying to save my logic files to the external HD. When creating tracks specifically using Audio Instruments, the playpack keeps cutting out.
I am connecting the HD via usb 2. I am also having to freeze the tracks in order to record more layers. There is lots of clipping and latency. I thought by using the external, this problem would be resolved.
The HD is not playing back the tracks fast enough, and keeps cutting the audio out. The audio cuts out everytime the blue light on the drive flashes.
I cannot save the files to the MackBook HD as there is notenough space.
Is there something very wrong with my setup?
any advice would be really appreciated.
ps. I am a bit of a newbie
thank you in advance.
Spy

Connect it via firewire 800. USB2 is not good for audio or video streaming.
I have 3 D2's connected to my mac pro, works like a charm.
good luck.

Disappearing external Firewire drive.

Hi friends.
My wife's mini has a LaCie external firewire drive attached. She uses it with Backup and it just suddenly disappeared.
It appears to be on and working- but not showing up on her desktop. Is there a way on restart-- to force her mini to look for peripherals it's not seeing? I always get such great help on this forum. Thanks in advance. Dan

I'm curious if/how that link worked out for you. I have been observing problems with Firewire/USB for the past month or more that I allowed my clients to upgrade to 10.4.9 and 10.4.10.
I am finally starting to cross over into the belief that an update within 10.4.9/10.4.10 caused a failure with external Firewire drives -- now I will include USB drives in that belief. I was skeptical for a long while but the coincidences don't line up.
My guess is that Apple updated the Firewire/USB bridge -- perhaps they even made it more efficient. The cost may be that various external drive enclosure manufacturers who coexisted (or even accommodated) Apple's previous bridge, now fail. I don't know if you recall the 10.3.x update that took down Firewires for quite some time to come. The only solution that worked for me then was to boot into OS 9, mount the drive there, and then restart in OS X. A very round-about solution.
So far, I have observed the following failures in the past couple months:
Powerbook G4 1.4Ghz (or so): failed USB LaCie hard drive, no clicking/non-harddrive malfunction
Mac Pro -- Intel Core Duo: two failed Firewire enclosures (Nexstar Vantecs). The drives inside were perfect but the enclosures ceased functioning first on an iMac G5 and then continued to disappear on a Mac Pro tower.
One of these enclosures had also disappeared from a new iMac - Intel. I could get the thing to mount and then it would disappear overnight -- my thought is that perhaps the drives don't remount after sleep? I did not do extensive tests.
I have had another client on an as-of-yet-unknown machine (purchased in last couple years) lose a LaCie Firewire drive... no clicks or hardware failure indications. I will investigate this week.
I had yet another client lose two LaCie drives connected to a Dual 1.0 Ghz G4 Tower. One LaCie drive enclosure seemed to fail completely at Firewire 800 speed and transfer slowly but reliably when dumbed down to Firewire 400. The other LaCie was unreadable even when I transferred the drive to another enclosure. I am still investigating.
On a Mac Mini (Intel) new enclosures from PPA Galaxy Metal Gear would not daisy chain without disappearing.
I admit that I don't want to believe that the recent OS updates could have caused this -- especially after the debacle of 10.3.x. But it is definitely possible and not altogether unlikely. Consider this discussion about a LaCie firmware update tool meant to make them compatible: http://lovemac.org/2007/04/28/external-lacie-firewire-disappeared-from-the-deskh elp/
Not having attempted the Firmware update yet myself, I cannot vouch for it. Firmware updates are not to be taken lightly but they are just the sort of thing that might make the Firewire/USB bridge in the LaCie's compatible with Apple's updates/fixes. Of course, that leaves the other vendors' drives high-and-dry.
Usually, Apple or Apple defenders like to say that the vendors should be writing perfect code and it's not Apple's fault if they optimize or fix code which breaks the vendors' equipment. I think this is a ridiculous argument. Granted, in our legal system, Apple would not usually be obliged to accommodate "faulty" code (even if they might happen to have been the originators of it). But what is the true definition of faulty code? In the realm of technology and computers, there are likely countless kludges and fixes and patches. The whole idea and goal is FUNCTION (ideally). Optimizing or standardizing code is important of course. It means that future authors can rely on the accuracy of the previous authors. But the world -- especially the tech world -- stands to gain more from consistency... from the language of the vernacular. If all the equipment and all the operating systems up to a point have deigned to speak in a consistent kind of pidgin, then it doesn't make complete sense to "fix" it to be some more "accurate" or "refined" grammar. Language works because it's locally consistent, not because it's accurate to some holy grail of grammar.
Specifically: Apple can't switch code midstream and say "oh, I made the code 'accurate,' not my fault if your stuff was built on bad code." Up until that point THEIR stuff was built on "bad" code too! It's a ridiculous argument but what can you do.
At this point, I imagine that Apple attempted to fix something with 10.4.9 and 10.4.10 that it had tried to fix before with OS 10.3.X. Instead, I believe it created an intermittent failure in Firewire/USB drives that leaves the drives inoperable as often as unmountable. It's just a theory based on having seen enough updates and upgrades have a really bad effect. I think people think we live in some future where we can trust our technology and tech manufacturers to get things right (or at least get things right often enough). Surely they're doing the best they can...no doubt.
I'm a little frustrated I should ramp down my expectations. I know. It's not like this is 2020 or 2050. It's really only 2007.
Good luck to us all.

Booting from external Firewire drive.

Hello there.
I got a brand new 17" 2g intel iMac and I'm very happy with it.
However I missed my 2 internal drives so I bought another firewire drive to make backups, having an emergency system, etc.
But apparently I can't install a system with this external drive (nor in the second ext. drive I got).
Is this a common issue? Do I have to do something?
(I'm using the Installer CD I got with the iMac).

It is important to note that a traditional APM partition can, in fact, boot an Intel Mac - I have done it on numerous occasions. Specifically,
- A GUID partition is required to install (new) an Intel version of 10.4.x. If the partition is APM, the installer will not recognize it as bootable and will not allow for installation. In this case, the GUID format is required.
- an APM partition can be used to boot the Intel as long as it is cloned.
I've used (and continue to use) Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner. Despite being a PPC app, it works as expected. I tested this when I first received my Intel iMac since I would inevitably need to use one drive (with multiple partitions of course) to boot a mixture of PPC and Intel Macs at work. As such, I have one external Firewire drive with 3 APM partitions - 1 with 10.3.9 (PPC) for labs that still run Panther, 1 partition with 10.4.x for labs that have upgraded and 1 partition with 10.4.x Intel for the 1 lab where the new Macs are slowly being integrated.

Panic when booting from external firewire drive

Hi all
I have just returned from holidays to the following problem:
While I was away a colleague upgraded a PowerMac G5 from OS X 10.3 to OS X 10.5.1 . He also upgraded an OS X 10.4 installation on an external firewire drive to 10.4.11 while connected to the G5. Now suddenly the 10.4.11 installation on the external firewire drive will not boot when connected to the PowerMac G5 - it kernel panics almost immediately. However it will still boot when connected to a PowerMac G4.
Has anybody seen or experienced this? Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.

My colleague has just decided to format and recreate the OS installation on the external drive.

Blue screen of death when La Cie external firewire drive connected

I tested a LaCie external firewire drive on my iMac and it worked fine. I packed it up well and posted it to a friend who gets the blue screen of death when the LaCie is connected to her iMac. She's not even trying to boot from it.
My iMac is 9.1 and hers is 8.1. We are both running Snow Leopard. Was there some problem once upon a time with chipsets or am I mis-remembering?
TIA

Create an ISO (Encore) or folder on your hard drive (Encore or Premiere Elements) and then use the FREE http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download to write files or folders or ISO to disc for DVD or BluRay (send the author a PayPal donation if you like his program)
Imgburn will read the ACTUAL disc brand from the disc, which is not always the same as the box label (Memorex is notorious for buying "anything" and putting it inside a Memorex box)
When you write to disc with Imgburn, use the SLOWEST possible speed setting, so your burner has the best chance to create "good, well formed" laser burn holes... since no player is required to read a burned disc, having a "good" one from a high quality blank will help

Upgrading: Migration Assistant & External Firewire Drive w/ Image

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