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Thread: help with mac book

  1. #1
    Master
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    help with mac book

    Hopefully someone will know an easy way to do this!

    Me and the mrs have a MacBook each, She uses hers for work she's an art teacher and finds mine much easier to use.

    I have offered to swap with her but don't want to wipe mine or her mac. Is there a easy way to swap the data between them without loosing it?


    thanks lee

  2. #2
    Master
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    Copy files via a USB stick or over wifi / airdrop?

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by golf View Post
    Hopefully someone will know an easy way to do this!

    Me and the mrs have a MacBook each, She uses hers for work she's an art teacher and finds mine much easier to use.

    I have offered to swap with her but don't want to wipe mine or her mac. Is there a easy way to swap the data between them without loosing it?


    thanks lee

    Do a time machine back up to an external drive with each MacBook (2 drives don’t try to do both onto 1)
    Then do a clean install of OS X and restore user data from the time machine back-up

  4. #4
    Grand Master Mr Curta's Avatar
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    What you do right is you go down to the Apple shop and buy a brand new MacBook and then when you turn it on you tell it to transfer all the data and settings from your MacBook then you wipe your MacBook and then you turn on your MacBook and then you tell it to transfer all the data and settings from your wife's MacBook and then you wipe your wife's MacBook and then you turn on your wife's MacBook and then you tell it to transfer all the data and settings from the brand new MacBook what you bought from the Apple shop but has your data and setting on now and then you wipe the brand new MacBook what you bought from the Apple shop and then put it back into the box what it came in and then you take it back to the Apple shop within 14 days and get a full refund simples.

  5. #5
    Not an expert but not seeing why Swapping the two time machine backups isn’t the most straightforward way.

    Incidentally, as someone new to MacBooks, what is it about yours (or hers) that makes yours easier to use?

  6. #6
    Master Franco's Avatar
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    Swapping the two time machine backups is the recommended way to do it.

    Another possibility, if you have only one external drive is to backup n.1 on the drive, and then connect the two macbooks with a firewire or thunderbolt cable. Do a fresh install of n.1 using the n.2 as source (Using "migration assistant"). Then fresh install n.2 from the external drive.

    Another option is to open both cases and swap the hard drives, in fact very simple.
    Last edited by Franco; 17th September 2018 at 09:43.

  7. #7
    Craftsman
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr Curta View Post
    What you do right is you go down to the Apple shop and buy a brand new MacBook and then when you turn it on you tell it to transfer all the data and settings from your MacBook then you wipe your MacBook and then you turn on your MacBook and then you tell it to transfer all the data and settings from your wife's MacBook and then you wipe your wife's MacBook and then you turn on your wife's MacBook and then you tell it to transfer all the data and settings from the brand new MacBook what you bought from the Apple shop but has your data and setting on now and then you wipe the brand new MacBook what you bought from the Apple shop and then put it back into the box what it came in and then you take it back to the Apple shop within 14 days and get a full refund simples.
    Not sure if this is satire or a suggestion of the most complex way to do this that doesn't involve printing out all the documents on both Macs and retyping them....

  8. #8
    Master DeepThought's Avatar
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    did you you migration assistant on the mac? allows you to copy between machines.

  9. #9
    Grand Master Mr Curta's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by astonandy View Post
    Not sure if this is satire or a suggestion of the most complex way to do this that doesn't involve printing out all the documents on both Macs and retyping them....
    Believe me, I know people who would do it that way.

  10. #10
    Apprentice
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    Quote Originally Posted by MrSmith View Post
    Do a time machine back up to an external drive with each MacBook (2 drives don’t try to do both onto 1)
    Then do a clean install of OS X and restore user data from the time machine back-up
    +1

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by MrSmith View Post
    Do a time machine back up to an external drive with each MacBook (2 drives don’t try to do both onto 1)
    Then do a clean install of OS X and restore user data from the time machine back-up
    This.

    I'd use carbon copy cloner instead of time machine, because of I changed computers 4 or 5 times in last 2 years and CCC full disk clone worked like charm. Twice I tried time machine backups and both times I had a problems with keychain and/or mail.

  12. #12
    How much space do you have on each computer? You can migrate a user account from one computer to the other using Migration Assistant provided you have enough storage space. You can then do the same in reverse before wiping out the redundant user accounts on each MacBook.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Phil Lee View Post
    How much space do you have on each computer? You can migrate a user account from one computer to the other using Migration Assistant provided you have enough storage space. You can then do the same in reverse before wiping out the redundant user accounts on each MacBook.
    I don't think this is a good idea. It will mess up with system user management, or at least I ran into all kind of random problems while adding new user and restoring from time machine backup. never again - now I just create a disk clone with CCC and set up a new machine from clone.

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