Backup and restore of home directories

[nomacyet]

Hi,

I want to replace the HDD of my sisters old MacBook by a SSD. Since she still has 10.6 installed, which was upgrade from 10.4 some time ago, I think it is best to make a fresh installation of 10.9. Of course we want to copy her data to the SSD. I want to do this with cpio using a nfs-mounted directory on my Linux server as a temporary storage place. This would be most convenient for me because I am familiar with the Unix commands - ok, I generally distrust graphical tools. Does this work on OS-X, i.e. does Apple's cpio handle all file attributes correctly?

 

[Gordo74]

Why not just use migration assistant (built in) once the SSD is in and the old/internal drive attached via something like a USB--> SATA dock>

 

[nomacyet]

Well, I don't have an USB drive or an SATA to USB converter and don't want to by something I have no use for.

 

[nomacyet]

Backup and restore worked like a charm. Comand line rules.

Installation of Mavericks instead was a nightmare. The Macbook did not recognize the Mavericks Bootstick as soon as the SSD was connected. The SSD proofed to be ok - it worked perfectly in my Linux PC.

Fortunately I had the right idea and I was able to install Snow Leopard from DVD and then the Mavericks Bootstick was recognized and I was able to delete the Snow Leopard installation and do a clean install of Mavericks.

Later I found out that behaviour seems to be a known bug of those old Macbooks. Boot keys don't work with some disks if they have no valid GUID.