Mac OS X stuff » boot drive

Migration Assistant no longer adequate

admin — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 22:42:23 +0000

After 3 years of loyal service, I decided to replace my aging iMac so I just purchased the new imac 27" quad i7 with a 256gb SSD and a 1tb drive. My previous iMac had a 750gb drive. I had a Time Machine backup and a Carbon Copy clone.

When I received the iMac, the SDD was already setup as the boot drive and the 1tb drive was completely empty(no system). As soon as I booted, I was asked by the Migration Assistant if I wanted to restore from a Time Machine backup. I had about 550gb on the old iMac plus a 100gb BootCamp partition and obviously, all this would not fit the SSD so choices had to be made. I chose all applications, users, networks and settings. After a few hours, the transfer was completed without a hitch. Then came the problem, I started Migration Assistant to transfer the rest to the 1tb drive but Migration Assistant won't allow you to choose a destination other than the boot drive so you can't transfer any data to the other internal drive using that.

I spoke to Apple and they said that no, Migration assistant won't do it and they doubt it will change any time soon. I won't even mention that as far as Boot Camp is concerned, you are also up the creek and have to start over. It's interesting that Apple now sells iMacs with multiple drives with no way to restore your original data properly.

Finally, I decided to install a complete system on the 1tb internal, and boot with that to use Migration assistant to transfer the rest and it did but I must have done something wrong because now, some files now have the wrong ownership. I have figured out that if I transfer the same problem files from my Carbon Copy clone, the ownership follows properly but it is a tedious process.

So, my question is "Oh Mac Guru, what would be the best and safest way to do this migration from a single drive iMac to a multiple drive iMac?"

Thanks in advance.

New iMac with SSD and 1tb internal drive combo

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:32:38 +0000

Hi, I just purchased the new imac 27" with a 256gb SSD and a 1tb drive. My previous iMac had a 750gb drive. I also had a Time Machine backup and a Carbon Copy Clone. When I received the iMac, the SDD was already setup as the boot drive and the 1tb drive was completely empty(no system). As soon as I booted, I was asked by the Migration Assistant if I wanted to restore from a TimeMachine backup. I had about 550gb on the old iMac and a 100gb BootCamp partition and obviously, all this would not fit the SSD so choices had to be made. I chose all applications, users, networks and settings. After a few hours, the transfer was completed without a hitch. Then came the problem, I started Migration Assistant to transfer the rest to the 1tb drive but won't allow you to choose a destination so you can't transfer any data to the other internal drive using that. I spoke to Apple and they said that no, Migration assistant won't do it and they doubt it will change any time soon. I won't even mention that as far as Boot Camp is concerned, you are also up the creek. Finally, I decided to install a system on the 1tb internal, and boot with that to use Migration assistant to transfer the rest and it did but I must have done something wrong because some files have the wrong ownership. So, my question is "Oh Mac Gurus, what would be the safest way to do this operation?"
Also not sure how TimeMachine will handle backups, I guess i'll find out when I wake up tomorrow.
Thanks in advance.

JP

OSX Server 10.5.7 > 10.5.8

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:05:14 +0000

I have a dual G5 tower that was running server 10.5.7. There are two drives with a raid mirror configuration.

When I did a software update to 10.5.8, the machine would no longer boot.

It did boot off of the DVD, so I took it to the Genius Bar and they found the raid broken and did something to make it boot. But the raid was not active, but that is ok.

The boot drive was then at 10.5.8 so the update must have worked, but the mirror drive showed 10.5.7. his was probably the problem.

I unplugged the mirror drive so no interference would occur. It booted fine.

Like a fool I tried another update: Quicktime, iTunes and a security Update for 10.5.8

Now it again won't boot.

I am not server trained not a Unix guy, so I am struggling.

Any advice of what to do or where to go for answers or information?

The Genius bar folks don't want to support Server software problems!

Thanks,
Bill

MacPro wont Boot without engaging the ‘option’ key

admin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:31:23 +0000

My first post here so please go easy.....

My MacPro wont boot from cold. I have to use the keyboard 'option' key to select the boot drive manually and then the machine boots.

I have checked and reset the boot drive preferences and when SL came a long I took the opportunity of doing a 'nuke & pave' all to no avail.

When I reset or restart you can here the heads making a 'kurlunck' sound; the heads perhaps are looking for something that is not there. I took this to be a warning that the hard drive could be failing however the SMART report indicates that everything is in good health and I have been living with this for more than 6 months, so I think the hard drive is ok.

I know that google is your friend in such circumstances but this time the 'G' didnt produce anything that a mere mortal like me could read let alone understand.

Thanks in advance

Mel

Upgrading an Older Mac

admin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:55:04 +0000

I bought a USB 2.0 card with four ports for less than 20 bucks at Micro Center. It works great. I can't believe I didn't do it a long time ago.

Unless you are upgrading your monitor, a 64MB Geoforce (sorry about the spelling) card can be had on eBay very cheaply (or you can tag me off line and we can talk about one I have laying around). Monitor and video cards should compliment each other.

You could also look around for a dual 533MHz set up for your computer (I am assuming you have a Digital Audio). It should plug right in and not cost nearly as much as a third party card. You could check the Web for installing an extra fan to blow over the new CPU, but that could be overkill.

Go for the 1.5 GB as 133MHz memory is pretty cheap these days. I bought three sticks years ago on eBay and they work fine. You can never have too much memory.

Check eBay for faster hard drives. I use 7200 rpm drives and yes, I can tell the difference on I/O intensive jobs. I have a friend who is using 10,000 rpm drives. One for the OS/boot drive, one for programs and one for data. That's way too much money for me. Besides, i still think if he set it up as a RAID configuration the I/O would be even faster.

Intel Mac/External Drive problem

admin — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:43:07 +0000

Hi,

I want to thank you guys for all the extremely helpful advice I received in regards to a recent post (“Hard Drive Almost Filled Up”). As always, you folks here definitely come through~!

I have another problem maybe you can help me with concerning a recently purchased desktop Intel Mac:

When left untouched for a few minutes, if I click on any of my external drives, the Mac freezes up for a while. I hear the drives spinning & it seems like they’re trying to “catch up” to the Mac’s speed or it’s as if they were asleep & came back on. This happens even with the extra internal drive I had installed & sometimes even with the BOOT drive.

The specs on the Mac are: 8 core, 2 x 3 Ghz Quad core Intel Xeon, 4 GB 667MHz memory, Bus speed 1.33 Ghz, OS X 10.4.11

Is there a specific setting I need to apply or a configuration that can correct this? I also have an Intel Power book which does NOT give me this problem, nor do any of my G4 Power PC's.

Thanks again for your previous help & hopefully someone can help me with this.

emac display flicker etc

admin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:26:10 +0000

Hi, I have an emac g4 that has a number of problems, It is a 1.25gz. Sometimes it will boot to a blue, blank screen, on holding down the alt key I see the boot drive and I can start up (10.4os) but will go to the blue screen again. When it does start up properly, which it does for no apparent reason, there are little dash shaped spots on the screen and a flashing horizontal flicker. I ran fsck and disk utility and installed a fresh version of 10.4 to no avail. I do not have the original disks so cannot run hardware test. The computer falls under the Apple emac screen repair but they will not accept it because it is out of the three year time limit, very frustrating and unfair. I read about an IVAD cable that can be replaced to repair the problem but am not sure if it is relevant to this problem. I would be very grateful for any ideas, thanking you in advance,
Connor

Disk Partition

admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:00:45 +0000

Using Disk Utility. If the disk in question is your boot drive you'll have to first boot from a different disk, such as a bootable backup, the install media that came with your machine, or a more recent retail copy of OS X.

Strange desktop stuff

admin — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:25:53 +0000

I have a Quicksilver 2002 (dual 1 Ghz processors) running Tiger 10.4.11. It has four hard drives. Two on the boot channel and two on an ATA/133 card. First, the icons of the two hard drives (boot channel) disappeared (but accessible via list window), but I got those back with a change to finder preferences. Don't have a clue how that happened.

Now or still, sometimes when I click on an empty spot on the desktop a music folder from my music drive (on the ATA/133) appears on the desktop, but is empty. It is a different folder every time and I can't do it every time.

When I down load files, they all stack-up on the boot drive icon. They used to line up below the four drive icons.

Do I have one problem or several problems? I hope it's a setting.

Thanks

What is this telling me?

admin — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:13:53 +0000

Some ambiguous or confusing things here. When you say you can "start it up in Target mode" do you just mean you can use it as an external drive or that you can use it as a boot drive for a different machine? Have you tried starting up that machine from a different disk (like that other machine in target mode, or an OS installer)?

My hunch is that the OS install is corrupted. That could be a side-effect of the KPs, which are themselves usually indicative of a hardware problem (and that hardware problem is usually memory failure). Your machine should have come with a diagnostic disc; it's not perfect but it is worth a run if you can still find that disc.

And you should buy that copy of DiskWarrior now. It almost certainly won't help with this problem - that's not the kind of thing it does - but it's a very worthwhile utility to have around.