Reinstall OS?

kirbyrj

kirbyrj

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Feb 1, 2005
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I have a new whitebook (9400m), and I'm going to sell it to my friend. I had installed a 320GB 7200rpm drive in it, and I'm going to take that with me to my "new" Macbook. In the meantime, I grabbed a cheap 1st gen Macbook (1.83Ghz Core Duo), and I put the hard drive in there. It booted right up and detected the new hardware, but should I do a fresh install on OSX on it? When it first boots, it goes to the ? Folder screen for a half second before moving onto booting correctly. I hadn't noticed this before. I have the time and might do a complete reinstall anyway, but I was just wondering.
 
You should do a reinstall of OS X. Different hardware config. You can either archive & reinstall or use a migration assistant to restore you settings to the one you are moving to.
 
Yup, an archive and install would be your best option.

Alternatively, if you'd like to see how it runs without reinstalling, just go into system preferences and select the correct startup disk. It is flashing the question mark icon because it is searching for a bootable volume.
 
Offtopic but how does one backup his Mac without software (Like CCC or Time Machine)? What folders would one need to copy?
 
Tylerdurdened said:
Offtopic but how does one backup his Mac without software (Like CCC or Time Machine)? What folders would one need to copy?
Click to expand...

It really depends on what you want to back up. The majority of my important info is in my user folder.

You can also use Disk Utility to create an image of your HD. Just boot from the OSX DVD that was included with the computer and fire up Disk Utility.
 
felix88 said:
It really depends on what you want to back up. The majority of my important info is in my user folder.

You can also use Disk Utility to create an image of your HD. Just boot from the OSX DVD that was included with the computer and fire up Disk Utility.
Click to expand...

Would you need to copy the System and Library folders?
 
It actually ran fine using the old install for the most part. I ended up just scrapping it though and doing a complete reinstall.
 
Tylerdurdened said:
Would you need to copy the System and Library folders?
Click to expand...

If you want to back everything up, I'd just use Disk Utility when booted from your OSX DVD to create an image of your HD contents. You could then use this image to restore you HD in the event of data loss.

I'm not sure which files and folders that you'd need to copy in order to back up everything. Even then, you'd have to "bless" the boot disk in order to actually boot from it.
 
felix how hard is the process? I'm doing my 1st mac backup/format/restore so i wanna make sure i have my ducks in a row. i hope i didn't lost the damn osx disk tho...
 
How about using a time machine backup? I see transferring info from a Time Machine backup is an option when doing a complete restore. Anyone try doing that?
 
In Unix based or like systems you do not need to reinstall the OS for hardware change. If you take OSX and move it from one computer to another computer everything works fine. The only time it doesn't work fine is when there is architecture change.

Unix based systems probe hardware on boot every time, windows doesn't which is why it is a common need for people to need to reinstall a OS on machine change with windows. You would have no problem taking a hard drive out of a i386 computer from 1993 and moving it into a P4 system. Even though the drivers have yet to be created the system will still boot.
 
ne0-reloaded said:
felix how hard is the process? I'm doing my 1st mac backup/format/restore so i wanna make sure i have my ducks in a row. i hope i didn't lost the damn osx disk tho...
Click to expand...

If you're just doing a backup/format/restore, you ought to do an Archive and install. It'll basically just reinstall your system folder.

The Disk Utility method will just copy everything and restore it exactly as it was. This works well if you're swapping out a HDD.
 
kirbyrj said:
How about using a time machine backup? I see transferring info from a Time Machine backup is an option when doing a complete restore. Anyone try doing that?
Click to expand...

I've done it before. It basically reinstalls the OS and then uses the migration assistant to copy your user data, settings and applications. This way you make sure that you have a new clean system and proper drivers, but everything ought to look and feel the same as they did on the old computer.
 
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