Upgrading to Mac Pro Plans
Posted September 20th, 2006 @ 11:18am by Erik J. Barzeski
Currently, my G5-to-Mac Pro upgrade plans are as follows:
- De-authorize G5 for iTunes.
- Back up main hard disk to second 250 GB disk in G5.
- Install 250 GB disk as third disk in Mac Pro.
- Use Tiger migration assistant to copy everything (apps, user files, settings, etc.) to primary Mac Pro drive (of two 500 GB drives).
- Reformat 250 GB drive to use as Windows drive (still not sure - Boot Camp or Parallels?).
I was worried about whether I'd automatically get software updates for certain Apple products (Soundtrack Pro), but now I remember: I have to pay for the Universal updates to those apps. Grrrrr. So I'll do that now.
Has anyone used the migration/setup assistant to transfer files from an old Mac or hard drive to a new one? Does it work nicely?
P.S. It does not appear that I can get my Final Cut Studio universal upgrade by calling Apple. I have to mail in my discs. How long will that freakin' take?!?!
Donate Life
Posted 20 Sep 2006 at 11:58am #
I've used the Migration Assistant when I got my replacement iBook G4 for my POS iBook G3 (yay logic boards).
It's pretty much incredible. I shut down the old machine, booted in FW disk mode, and the assistant ran for a while, transferring stuff over the cable. When I rebooted the new machine, everything down to login items and desktop icon locations was identical. It was like I had swapped the hard drives, so good was the cloning.
I ran the "migrated" OS for about a year (10.3, IIRC) before doing a backup and wipe to make the jump to 10.4. I never had any problems with it that I can remember.
Posted 20 Sep 2006 at 12:30pm #
I had a bad experience using the mIgration assistant when moving from a G4 Powerbook to an Intel iMac because of pref pane incompaibility. It ended up freezing the machine. I would not recommend using it to copy over PPC only pref panes. That was back in January, however, so you may be able to just install universal versions (if you haven't already done so) of your pref panes & apps on the G5 before the migration and then it will probably work fine.
Posted 20 Sep 2006 at 2:12pm #
I used Migration Assistant to go from my G4 PowerBook to a new MBP. The only problem I had was with the LittleSnitch pref pane. I ended up needing to boot to single user console mode and blow it away manually on the new MBP. It wouldn't boot with LittleSnitch in place.
Of course, when I went to re-download LittleSnitch, I learned that had I but upgraded LS on the PowerBook BEFORE migrating, I would have had no such problems. Oh well...
Other than that small wrinkle, the process was perfect. Even "picky" stuff like MS Office and the Adobe apps work perfectly (albeit emulated) on the new system.
Posted 20 Sep 2006 at 2:18pm #
I did when migrating from my PowerBook G4 to the MacBook Pro, and it worked. Mostly. Whether it was my PowerBookhard drive, or well, I don't know, it fell over. Fortunately I have two accounts (an admin user & my day to day), so I just logged in as the admin to get the basic stuff across, then logged in as myself and copied things manually (which funnily enough "just worked").
However app wise it was amazing - it even pulled across my sudoers file. Aperture is pretty much the only app that required re-entering my serial number (which is also my only Apple pro app) also, which was great. A definite time saver.
Annoyingly I didn't remember to de-authorize the Mac mini that I had been using at work prior (though I did remember with my PowerBook), but given I only use one computer now that's not going to be a problem.
Posted 20 Sep 2006 at 3:16pm #
Migration Assistant has been an excellent tool to migrate things from one machine to another for me. However, when changing architectures from PPC to Intel, take some time for one extra step before using the assistant: look through your directory and clean out any input managers, pref panes, browser plugins and quicktime components that are not (or might not be) universal yet. It might also help to look through your application folder and replace everything in there with their universal equivalent (for me, only MS Office and Adobe stuff remained PPC-only).
As for the Boot Camp vs. Parallels thing: for yourself, find the answer to the question if you need anything that requires direct hardware access from within Windows (basically: do you want to play peecee games?). If you won't, Parallels is by far the best solution, especially because you don't have to reboot and leave your usual environment for the Windows apps you need. The speed difference with normal apps (non-games) is good enough with Parallels. Most people say they don't even notice the difference.
Posted 21 Sep 2006 at 7:47pm #
Erik,
Actually, not long at all. I sent in my FCP 4.5 disc and had FCS Universal in my hands within two weeks.
Posted 22 Sep 2006 at 2:10pm #
I just got my MacPro yesterday, so I have fresh experience: I always create an 'admin' account as the first account on a box, then my accountname of choice as a second account. In this particular case, I should have just created the admin account then run Migration assistant immediately. Since I had logged in as my usual accountname, when I tried to import the accountname from the old tower, it wouldn't 'replace': I had to create a third account on the machine, and it doesn't have my preferred username. 🙁 I could have done it better, or gone back a couple of steps & restarted, but I was too eager and now I pay the price. As for Prefpanes etc. I took a leaf from the OS 9 days & threw everything 3rd party into FolderName(disabled) [yes, even in /Library]. Now I can re-enable them one at a time. The only other thing I don't see mentioned above is to remember to turn off startup items in your Account. Things like GeekTool aren't yet Intel friendly. Other than that, Migration Assistant worked like a charm. A slow charm, but a charm nonetheless (it took 4 hrs. to transfer over 93 GB of stuff).