Time Machine migrate settings

[yelloguy]

Not a question but more of a gripe and a warning. I thought I was doing everything super cautious but this bit me big-time yesterday. I installed SL on an externa HDD and made sure it was usable before I installed it on my internal HDD replacing a working hacked Leopard 10.5.7 install (non vanilla).

 

When I tried installing from within the External SL install, it kept erroring on me. Either install failed message or the Restart Mac screen. So I decided to use Disk Utility to do a HDD to HDD copy. That was the end of my Leopard install. I had a up-to-date Time Machine backup and in the past, migrating settings and apps from the TM backup worked a treat. So I was hoping to do that and be up and running in an hour or two.

 

But as soon as I finished importing everything from TM, the internal hard drive wouldn't boot. I kept getting a ACPI something or the other timeout. I tried a few searches, deleted a few kexts, but in the end, decided to redo everything.

 

Second attempt, I imported only my user folder, and applications and left the settings alone. But even that gave me the same problem.

 

So a third attempt, and this time I did not migrate anything. Rather I went into the Time Machine folders and copied the files from the latest folder. I have only done the user files (documents, music, movies, downloads) so far and it seems to be rebooting fine.

 

I will probably install the applications again. But if I don't find the installer or the serial for something I may have to import it from the TM backup. I am not sure if the settings are stored separately or not, but I will have to figure that out.

 

Just a heads up for someone to save them a lot of heartache and help them plan better.