Question How to manually transfer to a new (to me) MacBook Pro

[kirkdickinson]

I have an ancient 2007 MBP that still has Snow Leopard on it. My wife used to use it a lot but it has been in the closet for years. I plugged in an external drive and turned on time machine.


I tried to use the time machine drive to transfer to my newly purchased Macbook Pro, but it told me it is too old. I get a message that says: INELIGIBLE_OSX_TOO_OLD. Ok. I guess that the old computer needs to be updated to a new OS. Update doesn't show anything. I find that should be upgradable to El Capitan. The link takes me to the AppStore which wont connect. I found a supposed "Fix" for the AppStore. I download and install it. It didn't fix the store.


I found a direct link to download the entire El Capitan installer. It acts like it is starting to run, but just stops. No message nothing. I see that Lion is between Snow Leopard and El Capitan. I download Lion. Reboot and tried to run that update. Nothing. It acts the same as El Capitan. With all the mucking around, it made things worse. Now Safari, Firefox, and Chrome all crash on opening.


I went in and fixed permissions. Didn't help I don't know how to roll the system back to a working version from yesterdays Time machine backup.


This computer is old and junk, but I want to get all those photos, email, iTunes library, playlists, etc off of it.


What are the steps to manually transfer just the user files and not have all the old gunk that would come in from a migration. (even if I could get it to run.)


Thanks,

 

[bba-tcg]

The likely reason your OS installer (El Capitan, etc.) won't run is because the certificate has expired. You would need to change the date to a date after the OS was released and before the sunset of that particular version before trying to install it.

The best way to get your stuff would be to remove the hard drive from the old MBP and connect using a USB adapter to connect to your new MBP. The run the migration assistant and choose to transfer user data only.

 

[manly]

Based on the difficulties you're having trying to upgrade MacOS X, it's not worth the trouble and seems a little risky to continue trying.

Besides bba-tcg's suggestion, there is another way of doing it. Is the old Mac still connected to WiFi? If so, you can use rsync to copy the old home directory onto a different computer. 802.11n is a bit pokey so Gigabit Ethernet is a better option as well.

I always use rsync over SSH, so that would require sshd (server) enabled on either the old Mac or the new one. It shouldn't matter which.

Dumping the user's home directory onto an external HDD would still be a good idea, then you can use the Migration Assistant to ingest the contents. I have no idea if the source OS (Snow Leopard) is too old for this but you'd have to try. Even if the Migration Assistant doesn't work, you'd have the full copy of the data and could then manually copy files into the new account.

I think it's less work to use the network to transfer data than to open up the MBP itself to remove the internal HD. An alternative to rsync over SSH would be network file sharing (SMB).

How do you run a SSH server on Mac OS X?

How do you run a ssh server on Mac OS X?

superuser.com

AFP is no longer supported in macOS Big Sur. Here's the fix

You may need to tweak some settings to keep sharing volumes after upgrading to High Sierra or later.

www.macworld.com

 

[kirkdickinson]

The likely reason your OS installer (El Capitan, etc.) won't run is because the certificate has expired. You would need to change the date to a date after the OS was released and before the sunset of that particular version before trying to install it.

The best way to get your stuff would be to remove the hard drive from the old MBP and connect using a USB adapter to connect to your new MBP. The run the migration assistant and choose to transfer user data only.

The migration assistant is set up to migrate either the computer or the time machine backup of that computer. I don't see a method to migrate directly from a drive.

And, the Migration assistant won't run against the Snow Leopard OSX because it says it is too old. I have a complete time machine backup of it. The computer still runs and I can clone the drive to an external without removing it.

I have found a tutorial on how to move the iTunes library and that looks easy enough. The other tutorial that I found for moving the mail has a different version of moving it before 10.8 than after 10.8, so that doesn't look like a simply copy of the correct directories.

 

[bba-tcg]

The migration assistant is set up to migrate either the computer or the time machine backup of that computer. I don't see a method to migrate directly from a drive.

And, the Migration assistant won't run against the Snow Leopard OSX because it says it is too old. I have a complete time machine backup of it. The computer still runs and I can clone the drive to an external without removing it.

I have found a tutorial on how to move the iTunes library and that looks easy enough. The other tutorial that I found for moving the mail has a different version of moving it before 10.8 than after 10.8, so that doesn't look like a simply copy of the correct directories.

If you had the drive connected as I describe, you would be able to select it as a target. You may still run into the version issue, but perhaps not if only trying to transfer data and not settings and programs. At the very least, you should be able to copy from the disk, assuming it's not corrupted.

You really need the mail off something you haven't used in years?

 

[kirkdickinson]

If you had the drive connected as I describe, you would be able to select it as a target. You may still run into the version issue, but perhaps not if only trying to transfer data and not settings and programs. At the very least, you should be able to copy from the disk, assuming it's not corrupted.

You really need the mail off something you haven't used in years?

Thanks,

I can image the HD and connect it to the new machine. That is probably what I will do today. I have yet to find the steps to transfer the mail. The Photos, documents, and iTunes is pretty straightforward.

Yeah, the mail... This computer hasn't been used regularly ,but my wife has been using it for email and she has hundreds of threads with song lyric ideas back and forth with a couple other writers.

I don't care for saving personal emails much after a year, but here in our (windows) office, we archive business emails forever. I have emails back to 2002.

 

[bba-tcg]

I never delete email, but that's just because I'm lazy. Both my main machines show email back to at least 2008 in Outlook, but I doubt I would spend much time recovering anything older than 5 years if something bad happened. Maybe not even that far back.

I'm surprised Apple would have all that email in iCloud.

 

[kirkdickinson]

I never delete email, but that's just because I'm lazy. Both my main machines show email back to at least 2008 in Outlook, but I doubt I would spend much time recovering anything older than 5 years if something bad happened. Maybe not even that far back.

I'm surprised Apple would have all that email in iCloud.

I believe on this old computer, those emails are all set up as POP and not apple email accounts.

 

[bba-tcg]

I believe on this old computer, those emails are all set up as POP and not apple email accounts.

Bummer. I'm sure there's a mechanism for moving them.

 

[manly]

Apple has some terse documentation on the official way of doing it. But the 15+ year gap might be hard to overcome.

Import or export mailboxes in Mail on Mac

Use Mail on your Mac to import emails and mailboxes in Apple Mail or mbox format and to export mailboxes in mbox format.

support.apple.com

All the old data is in the ~/Library/Mail directory.