Getting my first REAL Mac (iMac)... Best way to transition?

[TenEightyPee]

I bought a refurb iMac that should arrive tomorrow. Until now, I have been using a Hackintosh that I built in late 2009... started with Snow Leopard and XMoved to Lion.

Anyway...

Can I safely use the OSX Migration tool between my old Hack and my iMac? What does it "Migrate?' Will it mess with the Bootloader of the Hack? Does it copy any "Hack" stuff over to the iMac? (Things I wouldn't want like Graphic Enabler, Kext files for my hack hardware...etc.)

I just want my Apps and settings brought over.

Thanks.

 

[mitchmcadams]

Can I ask what settings? To my knowledge, Migration Assistant will do a time-machine like restore, only moving everything to a new OS rather than to your previous one. It may be easier to use time machine prior and select to only back up what you set (applications). Let me know on those settings though, Im interested myself because in a few months I want to migrate to a MBP but keep my desktop in tact.

 

[TenEightyPee]

I would think that would be the case, but I was Googling yesterday and came across a thread that said it messed with the Hackintosh in some way that prevented it from booting afterward.

 

[mitchmcadams]

I wouldnt be surprised if there was a problem with kexts and drivers, but I find it hard to believe it would screw something up with the actual Hackintosh. If you forget about settings, and just decided you will manually restore those (were just talking about stuff within system preferences, correct?) then copying your Applications to an external hard drive, and then connecting it to the new iMac after you declined Migration Assistant and completed the setup, seems like it would be a breeze, as long as your not copying 10.7 applications to 10.6 or 10.5 (or vice-versa)

 

[kidpub]

I just went through a migration from a hackintosh to an iMac using Migration Assistant, and the result was an unbootable hackintosh. A quick Google search revealed that it's a known issue. This article on netkas suggests a fix for the hackintosh. Note that in my case there were also problems on the iMac side...incorrect kexts being moved over from the hack in particular.

Perry

 

[joeschmo12]

Easiest and safest thing to do is make a clone of your boot drive, or;
Clone a compressed disk image on a separate mac formatted hard dive or partition if possible, or;
Clone a to sparse bundle on a windows formatted hard drive.

Either of these options can then be mounted on the new mac for migration purposes, and your original hackintosh remains unchanged.