TM drive and Migration Assistant

[french frank]

Clearly a Frequently Asked Question - with more than one answer, including the one the Apple salesman gave: Time Machine > new machine. Not SuperSuper! or Migration Assistant.

"When you first turn on your new Mac have the older one connected to your network or make a backup of it with Time Machine and have that TM backup external drive connected to your new Mac and use the Setup assistant system to copy over Apps, Settings and Personal files. All new Mac's come with special builds of OS X created specifically for the new hardware in the system. OS X on your older Mac does not contain those newer special drives for the new hardware. Trying to restore the new Mac from the old could and probably will render the new Mac Un-Bootable."

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5952988?tstart=0

All in their opinion, I presume.

[Dave2002]

Really I don't think it's so difficult to just copy - if there's only one user (you in this case) and you only use a few applications. If you use non Apple applications, then there can be version differences, and older apps might now work on the new hardware, and you might have to buy new versions of some software to get working versions on the new hardware + OS. I think the Apple software should mostly work, but there are some differences in some - such as iMovie, where the different versions over the years behave significantly differently, and there can be compatibility problems.

My guess is that you don't have so many different applications that it won't be a problem simply to copy the data files you want. If you have less than 250 Gbytes (which I think may well be the case) just buy a drive, copy the files you want, then copy them onto the new machine. Won't take long.

If you have applications you may have to resinstall them from suitable sources - and probably your new machine doesn't have a DVD/CD drive. The new fashion of not providing CDs or DVDs can perhaps be a pain, and you'd have to download applications, then use a license key to activate the applications. For some software you may have to notify that you are migrating the software, or the licenses might not work. Simply copying application files and hoping that they will work might work sometimes, but not really recommended. That could cause real problems.

You probably have the basic Apple applications included already, so it would only be data files needing to be transferred.

When you think you've got things right you can then clear out the old machine but probably best to keep the drive with the files.

[french frank]

I take it you mean "older apps might not work on the new hardware", rather than 'now'??

And precisely what happened when the high street guys made a Windows partition on my Macbook: they didn't copy the application that was on my laptop (because 'they couldn't copy the applications') which was the whole reason for having the partition in the first place; so I had to buy the application again. Since they were the ones who suggested the partition (I was all for buying one of their secondhand laptops which was a lot newer than mine), I obviously didn't make my needs clear.

Anyway, all this discussion is in danger of being academic since I've spent 45 minutes in my bank pleading with them to transfer MY money to Apple. Apparently, their computers suspect a fraudulent transaction - in spite of my having a telephone grilling at home yesterday in which I confirmed I had bought the computer. The bank's only explanation was that I'd probably been caught in one of the bank's random 'highest level' fraud checks - which meant that the bank had to contact their fraud department, with me standing by, then I spoke to a real person, then handed the phone back to the bank employee and waited for 10 minutes for another department to keep them on hold (they never did answer) so I was told I could go home …

[Dave2002]

>>.I take it you mean "older apps might not work on the new hardware", rather than 'now'??

Yes - exactly.

I'd forgotten about your Windows partition. Does anyone here know if the various Migration Assistants or other similar software can cope with migrating both the Apple partition and your Windows partition to the new machine? You had someone to do that kind of work for you before - and hopefully that worked out OK. Might be simplest to go back to the person you know already. As I recall the software you were running was Pageplus (Serif) and there's no direct Apple equivalent. You could just keep one of the other machines to run that, and only migrate the Apple files and software, but if you want to relieve yourself of all the other machines you'll probably need to migrate the Serif software and any other Windows stuff to a partition on your new machine.

Good luck with it all.

[Anastasius]

Oh, ff, I wish you hadn't posted that link. I've not been into the Apple discussions website for a long time and I see that they've redesigned it also according to the 'Janet and John' principle. I hate it. They are not alone. I threw in my newspaper online subscription when they undesigned their layout into making it totally unreadable. Most paragraphs contain just one sentence. Apple have taken this to the next level. I have a 21" screen on my iMac. Their website uses less than 0.5% to deliver any content. The rest is ******** WHITE

[french frank]

Oh, ff, I wish you hadn't posted that link.

Waaahh! I'm sorry

Anyway, just checking: what's a 'bootclone' - what I have on my bootable back-up drive?

[Anastasius]

Waaahh! I'm sorry

Anyway, just checking: what's a 'bootclone' - what I have on my bootable back-up drive?

Yes, it is. Quite a good explanation here....if you ignore the wasted white space !

[Dave2002]

I wonder if this is the current best place to put a TM query. Maybe!

From the documentation it appears that left to its own devices TM will do some form of "backup" every hour. It also does some form of daily backups.

Does this mean that I can only recover a file to a resolution of 1 hour if I try to recover it during the day it was first created, or does the time resolution of file changes remain at 1 hour going back in time - maybe for ever?

In other words, if I did a lot of editing (say) 2 weeks ago, on Wednesday, can I go through the files for that Wednesday and see how the changes progressed over time - with a time resolution of 1 hour for that day? Oddly enough, this is something which I am finding very relevant today. I think the answer is that it does work, but I'm not sure.

When it works, I'm now finding TM has great potential - but I don't know that many people understand this, or use it this way. It's also useful for collaborative working, though it would be even more useful if all participants turned their versions of TM on!

[Anastasius]

All the information is there in the Time Machine entry in System Preferences.

But the quick answer is 'no'. Resolution is one hour for one day. There are utilities that track file changes, I'm sure but have no idea what they are or whether or not they support collaboration between multiple users.

You can track changes in a Pages document, I think, but you have to send it from person A to person B to person C then back to person A, say. Most people these days would expect that functionality to work using iCloud but it doesn't. But then that's no great loss to you, is it

[Dave2002]

I am not sure that your answer is correct. I'll have to check further. I have read that TM does some form of file differencing (unix had something like that ...) so in one day can store the differences between different versions throughout the day. Then it does some form of save on a 24 hour basis. If it works on file differences, then it could very well have a mechanism for recovery to within a one hour resolution in any arbitrary day.

I just don't know - few people really know how TM works (IMO), and my observations about what it actually does so far neither confirm nor deny your assertion. I agree that the documentation does say something like that, but don't believe everything you read.

[Anastasius]

Look at the time machine entry in system preferences, ffs. It tells you there !! What is the point in me replying with information from the actual mac os if you disregard it ?

Yes i am shouting.

[Dave2002]

Look at the time machine entry in system preferences, ffs. It tells you there !! What is the point in me replying with information from the actual mac os if you disregard it ?

Yes i am shouting.

OK - I hear/see you. I'll come back when I've checked out what the system ACTUALLY does.

[Anastasius]

OK - I hear/see you. I'll come back when I've checked out what the system ACTUALLY does.

Since I'm clearly wasting my time in responding to you with actual information, I will let you sort it out for yourself.

[french frank]

Meanwhile, if I could return this to the original topic: there seem to be a variety of different options for cable connections - three computers, one TM drive and x2 bootable back-ups drives (SuperDuper!).

I presume that the best connection would be Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt. The TM drive has only firewire but I think this will be sorted with the new cable on order (if anything actually arrives - thank you Lloyds bank).

If there are two separate SuperDuper! drives - do I just connect them successively and will the second be smart copied?

[Anastasius]

No.o.o.o.o.o.o !!!!!

First thing is, as you say, to get the right cables to allow you to connect your drives up.

It would help if you said what model Macs you have...new and the old ones.

(NB I can't advise re migrating anything in any Windows partition that you might have.)

There is no need to connect them all to your new Mac, one after the other !

I recommend that you do as follows and is based on the assumption that both of your old Macs have the 'latest' version of your data albeit possibly different data on the two old Macs.

1) As a safeguard and before you do anything else I would make a SuperDuper (SD) SmartCopy from OldMac 1 (OM1) to Backup 1 (BU1) and, when finished check, you can boot up OM1 from BU1.

2) Repeat for OldMac 2 (OM2) and Backup 2 (BU2). Forget about TM.

You should now have your two old Macs backed up and two backups that you know you can boot up from. This is a safety measure in case it all goes belly-up. Hopefully you will not need your SD backups.

3) Decide which of your old Macs has most of the data and applications that you want on your new Mac

4) Connect this old Mac (let's assume it is OM2) and follow these instructions https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204350

5) Your new Mac should have the data and applications from OM2 (but note..as previously mentioned..some applications may not work with ElC)

6) As a sanity check, I would fire up the programs (aka applications) on your new Mac and check that (a) they work as expected (they will run or they won't...simple as that) and open up some of your old data that you transferred. Print out a sample of your data, document whatever. Just so that you're comfortable with everything so far.

So now you should have your new Mac working with a subset of your old data and programs.

Now for the tricky bit. OM1.

7) Are there any programs on OM1 that were not on OM2 ? If there are then let us know which they are.

8) Is there any data on OM1 that was not on OM2 ? Word documents ? Photos? Music? jpegs ? Again please let us know and we'll take it from there as to the best way of transferring them.

You do NOT want to restore from your SuperDuper backups or TM onto your new Mac.

And, of course, you need a backup drive/strategy for your new Mac.