Moving or cloning hard drive to a new computer

[Maximino Salazar-Lechuga]

Hi there,

It's been a while since I don't post here, but it came up something
and I'm looking for advice. I just got a new MacBook Pro, because my
old MacBook was not keeping up with the CPU intensive apps I need to
run at the moment. The issue I have is that I want to keep running the
good old Leopard instead of the Snowy one. Also, I would like to save
a few days by customising and installing all the apps I currently
have. Therefore I wonder if would it be possible to clone my current
hard drive and use it in the new machine.

In the past I have cloned my hard drive when upgrading a HD to a
bigger size, while using it in the same machine. What I'm not sure is:
if this also applies when upgrading a whole computer. Probably I won't
be able to do it this way, but I wanted to double check with you guys.
Is this possible or someone on the list has done it before? Could you
please point me to the right direction.

I appreciate the input.

Cheers,
Max.

[Drew Reece]

Max,

Macs have a minimum OS, usually a few point releases before whatever is current when it sells eg. 10.6.x.

Mactracker or possibly the Apple tech spec may list it with the specific model info.

Chances are 10.5 won't be supported. Is there any reason for using 10.5 other than the setup involved? 

Macs have something built in called Migration Assistant (in /Applications/Utilities), it can move all your user data from one machine to another. It can also move installed Apps & settings. It is pretty good & you should find almost everything moves over no problem. The basic steps are…

1. Boot the old machine in target disk mode (hold T on boot). 

2. Connect it to the new Mac via Firewire. Just don't do it over wifi, ethernet is OK. 

3. Open Migration Assistant on the new Mac & select what you want to copy (eg Applications & Users).

4. Keep the old one around just in case :)

It would move the old 10.5 data into the new 10.6 Mac.

It works best on a brand new Mac if you use it in the first boot setup process.

Otherwise look at SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate an exact copy of the old one onto the new one, again using target disk mode to connect the two. Copying this way you will need to startup normally on the old one & use SD! or CCC to copy onto the new one, running in target disk mode.

You may find the new one won't boot the 10.5 OS. It might just be that Apple prevents installation of 10.5 not the actual booting once installed, so it may work, but in an unsupported fashion.

Re:co

 

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[Maximino Salazar-Lechuga]

Appreciate your reply Drew. As you said, apparently the MacBook Pro
doesn't support Leopard (10.5). But all is fine now.

The main reason I wanted to run it, is because I was having some
problems running a development tool that I need to use, called
JDeveloper. Leopard was running it just fine. But after much effort
finally the tool is running on 10.6.3, and I don't want to venture
just jet to push it to 10.6.4 in case it breaks. I may leave that for
the weekend.

Best Regards,
Max.