Our 2011 imac (running 10.6.8) went back for a display change. They dropped it and broke it, so have offered us a brand new one.

I backed up with Time Machine to an external drive before sending it back. I read that with Migration Assistant it should restore to a new one OK. My experience with Migration Assistant previously (going from 10.4 to 10.6) wasn’t good.

Any tips to ease the pain ?

Thanks

Never used it but in theory it should be painless! A tip for the future would be to use a free app called Carbon Copy Cloner. This creates a bootable backup of your Mac on the external drive. You can then boot the new Mac (allowing you to be up and running immeadiately) from that and clone it back onto the new machine’s internal drive.

I’ve used it with no problem when my laptop HD died – simple, I think when you first boot up/log on the new computer it gives you an option so restore from a time machine, just plug in & go.

You should be fine. I’ll give Carbon Copy Cloner another vote though – excellent bit of software.

Thanks.

Fingers crossed it goes well…

I had an Apple recall on the HD. Made sure Time Machine was up to date. Restored the HD to factory. Took it to the Apple store, 2 hours later picked it up. Plugged it in at home to the external HD, turned on. 20 minutes later all done. Painless.

YMMV.

Carbon Copy Cloner is a commercial product these days. Can’t remember what restrictions there are for a trial but look at the Bombich site for details. We use it at work to keep the server backed up and it’s well worth the cost.

Well…

My HDD died on my MacBook Pro. Tried to clone the dying drive straight to the new one. Failed.

Tried to restore from the networked Time Machine backups. No system backups on there. Failed

Did a fresh install of Mountain Lion from a pen drive, then tried restore from Time Machine. No applications. Failed.

Tried a restore from the dying drive. Applications restored. But not registered. Failed.

Reinstall all the purchased, non App Store software. Success.

Lesson; make sure the Time Machine backs up system and applications. Good luck 🙂

This started off OK, restored onto new system. Then I ran software update and that hung on the spinning wheel of death.

Just erased the HD and starting again.

This could be a long night…