What files should I transfer back to a clean install of mountain lion?
Hi,
I have a 2.4 GHz core 2 duo running snow leopard. I want to upgrade to mountain lion but want to start with a clean install. i have everything backed up on an external hard drive. My questions are this: what files should I transfer over from 10.6.8 while leaving the old junk behind. I will reinstall only the compatible apps later.
My second question should I use migration assistant or set-up assistant? I can't seem to find the necessary tutorial that is straight forward for this.
Any help would be appreciated.
If you're doing a clean install, which usually isn't necessary, then you want to bring over as little as possible. You can use Migration Manager in Setup Assistant to bring over your Accounts if there are no problems there. (If there are it probably accounts for the issues you're having and you'll need to troubleshoot your Home folder.)
You'll probably want to leave settings behind. Applications you already said you would install later.
The reason to run Migration Manager on the Setup Assistant is becuase after that it tends to create a second Home folder, which is not helpful.
Be sure you have a good backup before you begin.
Similar Messages
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While intending to perform a clean install of Mountain Lion while continuing with old apps and files, is it a waste to restore a backup that was made while running Mountain Lion as an UPgrade from Lion?
Originally I was running Mountain Lion as an UPgrade from Lion. I created a backup in Time Machine, performed a clean install of Mountain Lion, then I proceeded to use Time Machine to restore the back up.
When thinking about the essence of a back up restore, it occurrs to me that for all I know, I may have just wated my time IF Time Machine also restores all the old unneeded files that remain from Lion after an upgrade.
Since the backup was made while running Mountain Lion as an upgrade from Lion, did restoring this backup defeat the purpose of a clean install by reinstalling old Lion files?
If so, how can I re-do the last portion of the process so that I get all my home-folder files and apps back without the full bulk of old Lion files? Migration assistant I'm guessing?
-ChrisHello John!
Thank you for your response which solved my problem. For other users who may stumble upon this, I'll clear up the confusion and share how I solved the problem with your help; When looking for answers to my computer problems, finding unresolved questions where person B offers a solution and person A never comes back and says "That worked, thank you.", it demonstrates a "k-thnx-bye" user mentality that leaves others with the same problem lost. Without further ado:
It is not clear what you did because the meaning of "clean install" is vague. You can erase a volume and install an OS which leaves none of its previous content intact,
This is what I did: I erased the volume leaving no previous content intact, while then installing OS X Mountain Lion.
or you can upgrade an existing OS (or reinstall the same one) which does not alter your user - installed files.
An upgrade to Mountain Lion from Lion is what I started with initially before erasing anything. This was undesirable. Since this can cause Macs to run slower (especially whereas I'm using a mid-2011 Mac Mini), my goal was to go from operating within an upgrade to Mountain Lion, to operating within an installation of Montain Lion that was not preceded by any other oprating system.
Hence a "clean install of Mountain Lion while continuing with old apps and files" is confusing.
Well put and understood. What I should have said was:
1.Erase the volume
2.Install Mountain Lion clean
3.Confirm that Mountain Lion is functioning properly
4.Proceed to use either Time Machine or Migration Assistant to Import/Migrate/Copy over only two things; My old apps (That had been stored originally in the designated Applications folder) and all files and folders originally stored in the home folder under users.
If you restore from a Time Machine backup then all modifications that occurred subsequent to that backup become erased. It renders moot any OS X upgrade performed subsequent to that backup.
That makes sense and is just as I later suspected.
If so, how can I re-do the last portion of the process so that I get all my home-folder files and apps back without the full bulk of old Lion files? Migration assistant I'm guessing?
Yes.
This is what I did and everything works perfectly. Thank you so much once again!
-Chris -
Clean Install with Mountain Lion, including backing up files and Parallels
Hello,
I could use all the the advise I can get. Since switching over to the Mac, I have had to retrain my brain on how to do certain installations. I am planning on doing my first reformatting with an Apple and need some advise.
This is my current configuration:
OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leapord
Parallels 5 with Windows XP
My planned configuration:
Mountain Lion (clean install, no upgrade)
Parallels 8 with Windows 7 or 8
Here are my questions:
1. From what I read, I can download Mountain Lion and set it up on a flash drive from the disk utility. I have found some info on that and feel confident in doing so. When I reformat my machine, I do not want to reinstall Snow Leopard. Is the Mountain Lion downlad the full version? Is there no upgrade version, like Windows? Would I need to install Snow Leopard first? Anything that I need to know?
2. Assuming I successfully download and install a clean version of Mountain Lion, I would like to place my backup files back on my computer. For some reason, my Time Machine has been failing on the backups. I am thinknig that I need to get a new backup drive. Also, my backups have been occurring over my wireless network. I may plan on plugging the drive directly into my computer so that it copies over a lot faster. In order to completely restore all of my files carefully, do I run a successful backup of my computer with time machine and then restore it through the disk utility? Since I need to upgrade my Parallels, would I be copying over legacy Parallels files to my new install? If so, would those interfere with my new Parallels?
3. I am assuming that I will have issues reinstalling my old parallels and then doing the upgrade for the upgrade price. Would I have to purchase a full version on Parallels?
4. Any other advise that you can give? I really appreciate everyones help!
ThanksE30 BMW M3 wrote:
Here are my questions:
1. ... Is the Mountain Lion downlad the full version? Is there no upgrade version, like Windows? Would I need to install Snow Leopard first? Anything that I need to know?
Yes. Mountain Lion you purchase through the App Store is the full version.
No. You do not need to install SL. But there must be a volume, on the internal hard drive, formatted HFS+ with GUID partition scheme.
You can also create or recreate the Volume/Partition launching Disk Utility during the setup process.
2. Assuming I successfully download and install a clean version of Mountain Lion, I would like to place my backup files back on my computer. For some reason, my Time Machine has been failing on the backups. I am thinknig that I need to get a new backup drive. Also, my backups have been occurring over my wireless network. I may plan on plugging the drive directly into my computer so that it copies over a lot faster. In order to completely restore all of my files carefully, do I run a successful backup of my computer with time machine and then restore it through the disk utility? Since I need to upgrade my Parallels, would I be copying over legacy
Parallels files to my new install? If so, would those interfere with my new Parallels?
3. I am assuming that I will have issues reinstalling my old parallels and then doing the upgrade for the upgrade price. Would I have to purchase a full version on Parallels?
Usually I manually recover my documents and preferences from backups. It may seem at first a long and tedious task, but I never had any major issues that other users had in upgrading.
I do have VMware Fusion. I installed only the latest version of the program, with new s/n licence. The first time I executed Fusion, the program asked me to update the old VMs, that I did.
I think you can do the same with Parallels. -
I have a late 2009 iMac (2.93 Ghz Intel Core Duo, 4GB of ram, model id is 9.1) running Lion right now. I upgraded it all the way from Leopard using the standard keep-all-your-apps-and-settings way. After looking at the hardware requirements for Mountain Lion (and my success with running Lion) it seems that my good ol' iMac is still capable of running it fairly well. But I don't like the idea of "stacking" upgrade after upgrade (*coughs*, clean freak!). I like the idea of starting out clean this time because so many years of use has filled my mac with a lot of crap I no longer use.
So I would like to know your sane advice, and if there's anything I should check out before attempting this. Especially I'm concerned about hardware/driver related issues like for example: the webcam or speakers no longer working. Also, if there's something I'm overlooking please point it out.
Thank you in advance for any help you guys can give me. I'll be very grateful!If it wasn't a Mac computer that originally came with either Lion or Mt Lion Pre-Installed by Apple when new you would not be able to connect to the Online Internet Recovery system. It is a Feature of the Mac EFI Firmware system. And it will only install whichever version of the Download only version of OS X that originally came on that system.
My MBP came with Lion Preinstalled. Even if I have Mt Lion installed on the hard drive the Online Internet Recovery system would always point my MBP to the Lion download as that was the original version of OS X that came on my Mac.
No real authentication needed. Since your Mac came with Mt Lion no matter what newer versionof OS X you ever install the OIRS will always point you to Mt Lion and ONLY Mt Lion.
It is something different, but not completely different, from the built in Recovery HD partition on the internal drive.
No worries as during the install of MT Lion on your SSD the installer will Recreate the Mt Lion Recovery HD partition on your SSD. -
How should I set up my Time Capsule after a clean install of Mountain Lion?
I just did a clean install of my computer. I have been using time machine to backup everything to a time capsule. I used migration assistant to reload my stuff to my computer. I want to get time machine up and running again but I am not sure what the best method would be. Currently it has a record for two computers. My former computer and this one (with the lion backup). I want to keep those safe if possible but I know space is tight. My first choice would be to continue with the same backup of my computer that was started under lion (as it would have done for a typical install). This way it will currate the dates and what it keeps correctly.
Any help is appreciated!Okay, on reactivating my time capsule, time machine tells me that there are no backups in the past that are available. It looks like it thinks I am starting fresh. This doesn't match what I was expecting to see at all. I didn't start the backups because it didn't fit what I was expecting. Am I doing something wrong?
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Backed up before clean install but now can't see my files?
I got Time Machine to do a full backup of my Mac Mini to my Time Capsule prior to doing a clean install of Mountain Lion.
All went well with the install but how do I access all the files I backed up?Was the entire folder copied including the iTunesLibrary.itl file?
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I just bought an external hard drive. What files should I back up?
I just bought a 60gig external hard drive and I wanted to know what files should I back up?
The easiest is to drag /Users/<yourhomefoldername> to the backup drive.
Only the files you've created can't be replaced. The rest is on CDs, DVDs, or can be purchased again if need be.
I don't bother with clones because there's always the possibility of trouble down the line if you have to restore from one. (Something could be wrong with the clone, or it could be altered if you have to boot from it.) Why take the chance, when the OS and apps are expendable? And, if you don't test that the clone is good (by restoring to a blank drive), you're just fooling yourself as to its viability.
If the internal drive dies, you take the time to install a new one, load up OS and applications, then copy your home folder back. So your computer will be unusable for a half-day---big deal. This doesn't happen every day.
The main thing is that you've backed up your home folder. -
My Mac Book Pro is giving me a message that the start up disk is full, how do I delete files, and what files should I be deleting
There are several nice programs that can help you figure out what's on your computer - OmniDiskSweep, WhatSize, and DaisyDisk are the three I like. If you've had your computer for a while - and especially if this isn't your first Mac and you've been migrating from one computer to another, one of these programs can help you find files you didn't know your computer still had. For example, when I was trying to shed files to fit int a 256GB SSD, I discovered I had nearly 1GB of files in my Application Support folder belonging to programs I no longer used.
Other than that, your easy choice are music, video, and photos. They tend to be the big files. A movie will generally be at least 1.25GB, for example. -
I have Snow Leopard 10.6.8 installed. For me to use XCode 4.5, I must have 10.7 or later. What is the best way to go ahead? Should I install OS X Lion and then move to Mountain Lion, or can I straight away install latest Mountain Lion, i.e. 10.8.2
You can directly install Mountain Lion 10.8.0 to 10.6.8, and then apply the 10.8.2 Update.
Hope this helps -
After installing the mountain lion on my Mac at startup a stop sign appears and i cant loguin or do anything.. What should i do?
If you mean the "no entry" sign, a circle with a slash through it, then you need to reinstall Mountain Lion.
Boot into the Recovery HD by holding down cmd-r at startup tone until gray screen.
From there, reinstall Mountain Lion. -
back in the days of leopard, the dashboard widgets would come to the foreground but you could still see what you were working on. Now I've updated to mountain lion and the work is no longer visible when I activate dashboard. Can I change that back?
Go to system preferences, mission control, and unselect "Show Dashboard as a Space". While you're there, you may want to make dashboard set to a hot corner "Hot Corners" button at the bottom.
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What is the best application to optimize my Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion???
What is the best application to optimize my Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion???
Kappy's Personal Suggestions About OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utility is: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption. Drive Genius provides additional tools not found in Disk Warrior for defragmentation of older drives, disk repair, disk scans, formatting, partitioning, disk copy, and benchmarking.
Four outstanding sources of information on Mac maintenance are:
1. OS X Maintenance - MacAttorney.
2. Mac maintenance Quick Assist
3. Maintaining Mac OS X
4. Mac Maintenance Guide
Periodic Maintenance
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) See Mac OS X- About background maintenance tasks. If you are running Leopard or later these tasks are run automatically, so there is no need to use any third-party software to force running these tasks.
If you are using a pre-Leopard version of OS X, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts was significantly reduced after Tiger. (These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard, Lion, or Mountain Lion and should not be installed.)
Defragmentation
OS X automatically defragments files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive except when trying to install Boot Camp on a fragmented drive. But you don't need to buy third-party software. All you need is a spare external hard drive and Carbon Copy Cloner.
Cheap and Easy Defragmentation
You will have to backup your OS X partition to an external drive, boot from the external drive, use Disk Utility to repartition and reformat your hard drive back to a single volume, then restore your backup to the internal hard drive. You will use Carbon Copy Cloner to create the backup and to restore it.
1. Get an empty external hard drive and clone your internal drive to the
external one.
2. Boot from the external hard drive.
3. Erase the internal hard drive.
4. Restore the external clone to the internal hard drive.
Clone the internal drive to the external drive
1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Select the Source volume from the left side dropdown menu.
3. Select the Destination volume from the left side dropdown menu.
4. Be sure the Block Copy button is not depressed or is ghosted.
5. Click on the Clone button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon for the external drive and click on the upward pointing arrow button.
After startup do the following:
Erase internal hard drive
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your internal hard drive (this is the entry with the
mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the
drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is
failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be
reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the
DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the
drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended
(Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to
GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait
until the process has completed.
Restore the clone to the internal hard drive
1. Open Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Select the Source volume from the left side dropdown menu.
3. Select the Destination volume from the left side dropdown menu.
4. Be sure the Block Copy button is not selected or is ghosted.
5. Click on the Clone button.
Destination means the internal hard drive. Source means the external startup drive.
Note that the Source and Destination drives are swapped for this last procedure.
Malware Protection
As for malware protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. Starting with Lion Apple has included built-in malware protection that is automatically updated as necessary.
Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection:
1. Mac Malware Guide.
2. Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware
3. Macintosh Virus Guide
For general anti-virus protection I recommend only using ClamXav, but it is not necessary if you are keeping your computer's operating system software up to date. You should avoid any other third-party software advertised as providing anti-malware/virus protection. They are not required and could cause the performance of your computer to drop.
Cache Clearing
I recommend downloading a utility such as TinkerTool System, OnyX 2.4.3, or Cocktail 5.1.1 that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old log files and archives, clearing caches, etc. Corrupted cache files can cause slowness, kernel panics, and other issues. Although this is not a frequent nor a recurring problem, when it does happen there are tools such as those above to fix the problem.
For emergency cleaning install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the command line. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard. (AppleJack works with Snow Leopard or earlier.)
Installing System Updates or Upgrades
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Backup and Restore
Having a backup and restore strategy is one of the most important things you can do to maintain your computer. Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Deja Vu
3. SuperDuper!
4. Synk Pro
5. Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance and backup and restore.
Always have a current backup before performing any system updates or upgrades.
Be sure you have an adequate amount of RAM installed for the number of applications you run concurrently. Be sure you leave a minimum of 10% of the hard drive's capacity or 20 GBs, whichever is greater, as free space. Avoid installing utilities that rely on Haxies, SIMBL, or that alter the OS appearance, add features you will rarely if ever need, etc. The more extras you install the greater the probability of having problems. If you install software be sure you know how to uninstall it. Avoid installing multiple new software at the same time. Install one at a time and use it for a while to be sure it's compatible.
Additional suggestions will be found in:
1. Mac OS X speed FAQ
2. Speeding up Macs
3. Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
4. Essential Mac Maintenance: Get set up
5. Essential Mac Maintenance: Rev up your routines
6. Five Mac maintenance myths
7. How to Speed up Macs
8. Myths of required versus not required maintenance for Mac OS X
Referenced software can be found at CNet Downloads or MacUpdate. -
Dear MAC-Friends.
PLEASE HELP ME.
I am extremely afraid to do something wrong - what will be a failure so I loose all the photos I had in my iphoto library before installing the Mountain Lion.
I have just installed the MOUNTAIN-LION and now I can´t use my Iphoto-programme without answering the following question:
Choose another Library ? ( But I only want the choose the photos which one was in the old iPhoto-Library and not the other photos on the MAC-computer ? ).
and the other possibility is:
Create a new Libray ! Which iPhoto-library ?
And why create a new and to risq to loose the old photos.
PLEASE HELP ME.
Kind regards FINN GRABOWSKIOk. Let me first ask you, do you have any backups of your files - for example, do you use Time Machine or any other backup system?
Next, quit iPhoto. In the Finder, go to your Pictures folder. Is there a file there called iPhoto.Library? How large is it? (If it doesn't show the size, click once on it, click cmd-I to see the information). If it's a healthy size (ie, several GB), then that should be your library, and you can double-click it to launch iPhoto. (The application will remember where your library is next time, you can just launch iPhoto normally).
If that's not the right file, check your Trash. Is there anything in there?
Matt -
Can somebody please advise urgently...
I backed up my entire hard-drive of my macbook pro - just prior to installing osx mountain lion.
I put everything into a folder on my desktop - then backed it up onto an external drive. Once this was done - i deleted the folder off my desktop - and following this - things started to go all weird...pages hanging, the coloured 'wheel of death' appeared for ages. So i had to employ a 'hard-boot' restart - as i had not other options.
I'm pretty sure i made copies of of files/apps/folders etc - however not so sure now as i cant even start up my laptop!!!
Can somebosy please help me urgently??!!!Got the exact same problem, and I also did this operation many times before, from 500Gb to 750Gb, and then from 750Gb to 1 Gb. Not My HD got a little such complaining about bad sectors when in windows bootcamp, but still runs fine though.
So I bought a new 1Gb drive exactly same drive as the one thats getting sick. I did the clone thing, with super duper, CCC, DU, but no matter it will not boot when i move the new drive inside the macbook…….**** thing exuse me, but wasted so much time.
Now I get this strange feeling that something must have changed in the macbook itself. Just wondering if this could be a EFI "mac bios" prevention thing, they made just to sell more new computers, when you can't improve or fix your old one.
If so, then its pretty scary. If not then I simply can't figure out why this suddenly becomes a problem for so many people, as I see so many posts about this!!
BR Pete -
What is the best way to do a clean install
What is the best way to do a clean install? I bought a new iMac and I am giving my old one to my wife. She has an older iMac. I backed up her computer using Time Capsule and just want to wipe out my old computer and hook up the external drive and import all her data straight over.
Joe McGarryYou may just restart your old computer right after/on the startsound press "cmd and r" this shuld get you to recoverymode. Here you can start up disk utilitys, chose your mac HD and press erase. After this close disk utilitys and install OS (you may connect the time capsul already and it will import with the install)
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