[InactionMan]

Old iMac died. New one incoming tonight.

Would you recommend just doing a fill restore from Time Machine or use Migration Assistant....and is there really a difference?

And I think I read that Time Machine can't pick up where it left off on a new Mac. Is this true? Are my Time Machine backups going to reset?

[curiousuburb]

If the old iMac was drastically older than the new one (G5 vs intel) then you might have issues with PPC vs universal apps and be better with a reinstall and migration assistant. More than a Rev difference and I'd be inclined to go with a clean system and MA. Identical machines ought to be ideal candidates for TM restore.

TM can be sensitive to different usernames, but that verges on being an ownership/permissions problem, and I think there are workarounds.

Be aware if you choose Beer too often first and/or get stupid about Source and Destination for any restore operation you may have to add a harsh language filter.

[turtle]

Yeah, I voted to do a full restore but didn't think about PPC vs Intel. If your old one is PPC then you should use Migration Assistant. If it's Intel then you can likely get away with full restore.

[Ryan]

I heard in a podcast that Time Machine can't pick up from one computer and keep going on another because it uses MAC addresses to uniquely identify its host. I can't vouch for this tidbit myself, just FWIW.

[turtle]

Originally Posted by Ryan I heard in a podcast that Time Machine can't pick up from one computer and keep going on another because it uses MAC addresses to uniquely identify its host. I can't vouch for this tidbit myself, just FWIW.

That can't be entirely accurate because I mad my wife's MB logic board replaced and I was able to restore from TM onto that system. It's been buggy, but functional. I'm considering a clean start because of this as a matter of fact.

[curiousuburb]

There are workarounds to spoof the MAC address in order to rename TM in the worst case, and I think there are some threads on Apple Discussion boards about it.

[Kickaha]

It was my understanding that if you restored from that TM backup (either through TM, or Migration Assistant) and then told it to use that drive, that it would do so, and modify the MAC coding appropriately.

[thegeriatric]

Although i use time machine, I also back up files manually, so would just drag from back up hard drive to new machine.

[InactionMan]

I did a full restore from on old G5 to glorious Intel and everything worked perfectly. I had an assload of updates to run but that was it.

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by Kickaha It was my understanding that if you restored from that TM backup (either through TM, or Migration Assistant) and then told it to use that drive, that it would do so, and modify the MAC coding appropriately.

I think it works in that case, but you have to go through Apple's tools for it to work, or use one of the workarounds.

I've never actually had to restore from Time Machine, so I'm just going by what I remember hearing. It's good to hear Apple has a method for moving machines and bringing Time Machine along though.

[turtle]

Oh, one other hurdle I ran into was making sure the OS was updated on my new machine. When I got the MB back from Apple it was only on 10.5.4 rather than the current 10.5.6. This caused the TM restore to fail. I finally installed 10.5.6 and then went through the process of restore and it worked.

[Swox]

I don't know if it works or not, but I'd want to do Time Machine because it's so damn easy...

[Kraetos]

Migration Assistant.

I tried Time Machining from an old machine to a new machine a while ago and the new machine was (still is) very upset with me. I had to do an archive and reinstall, but there are still quirks I haven't had time to iron out yet. I may give up and simply wipe it, but that OS X install has been carefully preserved across four different Macs now - I have everything exactly the way I want it. Three months later and I'm still kicking myself for using Time Machine and not Migration Assistant.

Migration Assistant avoids transferring system data specific to the source computer. Time Machine takes no such measures, because it is not intended for circumstances in which the source and destination computers are different.