How do I clean off a mac and clone an older mac onto it?

November 9, 2006 12:08 PM

I've got my wife's old powerbook and my old iMac G5. I'd like to basically copy everything on the powerbook over to the iMac. I know about the great migration app that runs when you first get a mac, but how do I go about wiping the iMac clean and copying powerbook stuff over as if the iMac were new?

Do I need the original install discs in order to do it? Do I have to format and reinstall the OS? I can't seem to locate the iMac install ones (I have my install discs for my new mac pro), but is there any other way to delete all my old data, settings, and users, and re-run the original "welcome to this mac" application that included the migration tool?

posted by mathowie to computers & internet (17 comments total)

If you want to wipe the disk clean, you need the install disks, if you just want to transfer, the migration program is in the "Utilities" folder under "Applications" called "Migration Assistant."

(I had to find this myself, for this same purpose yesterday)
posted by 1f2frfbf at 12:14 PM on November 9, 2006

The easiest way to wipe the system is to get the system disk and insert it. Upon rebooting it will give you options to reformat and reinstall the OS. Afterward you can easily import your information during the setup process.
posted by Aanidaani at 12:17 PM on November 9, 2006

is this the kind of thing you're looking to do?
posted by the painkiller at 12:17 PM on November 9, 2006

You could clone the drive.

The iMac may require OSX 10.4, so as long as you have that on the powerbook, you can make an complete duplicate of the powerbook.

Bring the powerbook up to date by running Software Update and installing the Mac OS updates.

Boot the iMac into Target Disk Mode and connect it to the powerbook using a firewire cable. The iMac will then appear on the powerbook as a firewire drive.

Use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the powerbook drive to the iMac drive.

Once done, eject the drive, disconnect the cable and reboot the iMac. If the two machines are going to exist on the same network, review the network settings and the Computer Name under Sharing.

Viola! I do this all the time to upgrade systems for work.
posted by silly110671 at 12:46 PM on November 9, 2006

This will completely wipe your iMac hard drive, replacing it with the data and OS from the laptop. If that's not what you want to do, ignore this.

Assuming you are running OSX on the laptop and you are licensed to use the OS on both boxes:

- Download Carbon Copy Cloner onto the laptop.
- Restart the laptop in target mode (hold down the 'T' key while it boots).
- Shut down the iMac.
- Connect the laptop via Firewire to the iMac.
- Reboot the iMac while holding down the Option key.
- Select the laptop in the boot menu. Click on the arrow.
Your iMac should now be booted from the OS on the laptop.
- Start Disk Utility from the laptop hard drive.
- Erase the iMac drive.
- Start Carbon Copy Cloner. Click on the Preferences button.
- Select 'Fix Permissions before cloning'
- Select 'Make bootable (or similar)
- Make sure that 'Create image on target drive' is not selected.
- Close the preferences
- Select the Source drive (the laptop)
- Select the Target drive (the iMac)
- Click on the lock and authenticate
- Click on clone.
- Wait.
- Shutdown.
- Disconnect the laptop.
- Reboot both the laptop and the iMac.

You can run the setup assistant manually if you want (/Applications/Utilities/Setup Assistant)

Caveats:
- You should probably do backups before you do this.
- This will not restore your iMac to pristine condition, but it will get everything from your laptop onto your iMac. You won't see the movie.
- It may not work. I've never cloned the active system drive.
- It may work much better if you enable the root user on the laptop and run Carbon Copy Cloner as root.
- If the drive on the laptop is larger than the drive on the iMac, you'll need to skip some items. There are controls for this in Carbon Copy Cloner.
- Check your network settings or the two computers will have the same IP address and they won't be able to be on the same network.
posted by donpardo at 12:57 PM on November 9, 2006

Carbon copy cloner- clone the powerbook drive... then wipe the imac and install 10.4 (or whatever you're using), fire the imac back up, mount the powerbook disk image, copy the apps/docs/preferences over... should be like the powerbook- just on the imac...

oh and then give me the powerbook!
posted by eleongonzales at 12:59 PM on November 9, 2006

Dad-gummit! I should have previewed.

Good point about the Computer Name, silly110671.
posted by donpardo at 1:00 PM on November 9, 2006

I prefer SuperDuper to CCC these days. Cloning the PowerBook to the iMac will be much faster than using Migration Assistant. As long as you have 10.4 (10.3.5 might be the minimum, actually) on the PowerBook, it will work. You don't need to be root.
posted by sudama at 1:47 PM on November 9, 2006

Another vote for Nanian's SuperDuper
posted by dance at 2:18 PM on November 9, 2006

Alright, I'll try donpardo's instructions out with superduper instead of CCC. Both the laptop and imac are running 10.4.7 so that should be good. My only other worry was the laptop has I think a 40Gb drive and the iMac has a 250Gb drive so hopefully once cloned the rest of the spare disk can be used on the mac (I recall in windows you'd have to use something like partition magic to make sure this all worked out).
posted by mathowie at 2:47 PM on November 9, 2006

Heh. You saved me a question. I'll need to do this exact same thing once Apple actually gets around to shipping my shiny new MacBook Pro. (Come on, Apple — I'm dying here!)
posted by jdroth at 3:18 PM on November 9, 2006

Oh jd, if you have a brand new mac, the first time you turn it on, it will let you transfer everything from your old mac. Once complete (you tether them for a couple hours on a firewire cable), it's like starting up exactly where you left off on your old mac, but on new hardware. Literally everything will be in the exact same spot on your desktop, on your new mac, from where you left it on the old one.

I just need to do that with an old computer and it sounds like a reformat and migration is the way to go.
posted by mathowie at 3:28 PM on November 9, 2006

"If you want to wipe the disk clean, you need the install disks"

This isn't true. You can also just put the old machine in Target Disk Mode and wipe the drive that way. Sometimes it's a lot less of a hassle.

Unless mathowie's wife has a pre-firewire PowerBook, which would be a shame. :)
posted by drstein at 9:54 PM on November 9, 2006

Your 250 GB drive will be fine. SuperDuper is just going to copy all the files over, skipping a set of system files, such as caches and host-specific settings, which aren't appropriate to copy. It's not going to do any low-level stuff which would confuse the size of the hard drive or anything.

If you're keen on running the Migration Assistant (which has worked like magic in my experience), you can almost certainly install 10.4 on the iMac using your Mac Pro software. One of the discs that shipped with it should be a vanilla 10.4 install DVD, though it may say something about the Mac Pro on the label.
posted by sudama at 6:07 AM on November 10, 2006

actually sudama, I tried that and when the system reboots to begin the real install, I get a black screen of death that talks about the PPC chip, so I think it's probably an intel-specific installer.

I also got a vanilla copy of the 10.4 install discs via P2P and that didn't seem to work either. I'll try the cloning app or just schlep the iMac down to a genius bar and have them run the iMac install discs.
posted by mathowie at 10:47 PM on November 10, 2006

D'oh!
posted by sudama at 6:48 PM on November 11, 2006

Sorry to lead you astray. I haven't encountered an Intel-specific Tiger installer.

Can't see why cloning the PowerBook to the iMac wouldn't work.
posted by sudama at 6:51 PM on November 11, 2006