Is Migration Assistant a good solution to restore data after hardware upgrade?

[tchit]

Hello there,

I’m in the process of upgrading my old and loyal Hackintosh to a Z390 motherboard, i9 9900k and Radeon VII. It’s currently on High Sierra.
I was wondering if I could do a clean Mojave install, get everything working, and then use the Migration Assistant tool to restore Apps and data. I read on another thread that it was important not to check "Other files and folders" in Migration Assistant.
What about the rest? Do you think it should work fine with everything restored?

Thanks a lot

 

[Humanate]

Hello there,

I’m in the process of upgrading my old and loyal Hackintosh to a Z390 motherboard, i9 9900k and Radeon VII. It’s currently on High Sierra.
I was wondering if I could do a clean Mojave install, get everything working, and then use the Migration Assistant tool to restore Apps and data. I read on another thread that it was important not to check "Other files and folders" in Migration Assistant.
What about the rest? Do you think it should work fine with everything restored?

Thanks a lot

I use the migration assistant and it works with a caveat. I have multiple user accounts on my machine for the family and since Mojave, it wont restore multiple users at the install stage (during the install you are prompted if you want to migrate data or you can do after install with migration assistant). For some reason if I select multiple users to migrate, it only migrates one.

As a work around, I migrate my user account at the install stage and then after installed I use migration assistant to migrate the others. This works very well, obviously if you have only one user account then even simpler.

Also, untick the "other files" box when migrating

 

[tchit]

I use the migration assistant and it works with a caveat. I have multiple user accounts on my machine for the family and since Mojave, it wont restore multiple users at the install stage (during the install you are prompted if you want to migrate data or you can do after install with migration assistant). For some reason if I select multiple users to migrate, it only migrates one.

As a work around, I migrate my user account at the install stage and then after installed I use migration assistant to migrate the others. This works very well, obviously if you have only one user account then even simpler.

Also, untick the "other files" box when migrating

Thanks, I used it from my High Sierra clone disk to the new Mojave install and it worked perfectly, even for all users.

 

[zipb]

Hello there,

I’m in the process of upgrading my old and loyal Hackintosh to a Z390 motherboard, i9 9900k and Radeon VII. It’s currently on High Sierra.
I was wondering if I could do a clean Mojave install, get everything working, and then use the Migration Assistant tool to restore Apps and data. I read on another thread that it was important not to check "Other files and folders" in Migration Assistant.
What about the rest? Do you think it should work fine with everything restored?

Thanks a lot

I basically cloned my Mojave boot disk from my old Z170x to my new Z390. The only thing I changed was the EFI partition on the clone, settings for Z390 are different from Z170. Worked(and works) fine.
To my surprise, I could even boot the Z390 from my Z170 SSD. Didn't work very well of course, but still...

 

[tchit]

I basically cloned my Mojave boot disk from my old Z170x to my new Z390. The only thing I changed was the EFI partition on the clone, settings for Z390 are different from Z170. Worked(and works) fine.
To my surprise, I could even boot the Z390 from my Z170 SSD. Didn't work very well of course, but still...

My previous build was on High Sierra so it would have been too risky.

 

[kSilva]

I basically cloned my Mojave boot disk from my old Z170x to my new Z390. The only thing I changed was the EFI partition on the clone, settings for Z390 are different from Z170. Worked(and works) fine.
To my surprise, I could even boot the Z390 from my Z170 SSD. Didn't work very well of course, but still...

I'm upgrading my Gigabyte z97x to the ASUS Prime Z390. I'm planning on moving the SSD drive running High Sierra in my z97x and connecting it to the new Asus Z390. So, what you are saying is that only the EFI partition needs to be updated with a new clover configuration that is appropriate for the new Asus board being installed? The rest of the High sierra installation stays the same?

 

[zipb]

I'm upgrading my Gigabyte z97x to the ASUS Prime Z390. I'm planning on moving the SSD drive running High Sierra in my z97x and connecting it to the new Asus Z390. So, what you are saying is that only the EFI partition needs to be updated with a new clover configuration that is appropriate for the new Asus board being installed? The rest of the High sierra installation stays the same?

Yes, I cloned my GB Z170 SSD with High Sierra(I just looked, I was still on HS then), and replaced the EFI partition on the clone with one suitable for my new system.

Only thing: you get a new System Def/mac address/etc. and lots of copy protected software will not like this.

If you clone first and replace the EFI, you can try and leave you Z97 system unharmed.

Mind you, from a Z97 to a Z390, that's an extra generation. Might not make much of a difference, OSX basically contains all the necessary code for all the Mac models that are (still) supported. Not so sure about the move from GB to Asus, but in principle EFI/Clover should take care of this.

 

[Shiitaki]

I'm upgrading my Gigabyte z97x to the ASUS Prime Z390. I'm planning on moving the SSD drive running High Sierra in my z97x and connecting it to the new Asus Z390. So, what you are saying is that only the EFI partition needs to be updated with a new clover configuration that is appropriate for the new Asus board being installed? The rest of the High sierra installation stays the same?

I've done this recently on a couple of hacks in multi-hack upgrade circle. What I would do is find a scratch drive big enough to hold the macOS, do the clean install and all the experimentation you need to in order for a solid working EFI folder and the specific drivers you need in macOS. Multibeaast has a nice feature for you to save a file of the build you are applying. Once everything is working, including iMessage.. etc. you then can clone your EFI folder back to the USB thumb drive installer and test it, your iMessage debug should show the same numbers. The terminal command "diff 'filename 1' 'filename 2' is fantastic for this.

One the USB boots your test macOS install, then move your current SSD over and then boot again with your USB drive, you will the to log in to all of Apple's services again. Then install the driver you need in macOS, don't do anything to EFI. You can then copy the EFI from the USB to your old drive. Making a backup of the old EFI might be useful in the future btw.

Then you should be able to remove the USB stick and boot from your old SSD. The hardest part about a hack is really dialing in the EFI. Once you have that you can just put than on your old drive. You can do a default format on a USB drive and use that for EFI experimentation. You don't even need unibeast.

Data Migration doesn't make a lot of sense if you using the same physical drive. In my experience it's not reliable anyway.

Software licensing sucks, you are going to have to reregister everything no what you do. you could try running the new machine with the old system definition from your current Clover config.plist, I don't think that will work because until I change the system definition from the default Unibeast 14 or 15 to 18,3 the kext won't load for the built in ethernet ports on Z370 boards. The system definition is key for things like enabling the integrated GPU on the CPU as a coprocessor.

I've had better luck just copying the apps I wanted from the old computer to the new, and then copying the old user folder to the new user folder. You should do this from a burner user account, not when you are logged in.