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Best way to put previous user accounts and appl...

The hard drive on my mid-2011 27" iMac died. I thought I had Time Machine backups, but it turned out that backups from the last few months were not saved.

Before the hard drive was completely dead, I was able to start the iMac in Target mode, connect it to a MacBook, and copy most of the files to an external drive, but I couldn't make an exact replica of the hard drive as it hung up every time I tried that. I was able to copy the Applications folder, all the user folders, and the System folder. I then installed a new hard drive in the iMac and installed macOS Sierra on it.

My question is: what is the best way to put my files on the new hard drive? Should I make a new account for each person, and then copy their documents, downloads, etc. to the new account? Or is there a way that would replicate all their settings, etc.?

For applications, should I trying copying the files or rather re-install each application? What about the System folder?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Jennifer

Use Target Disk Mode as you have been, but use Migration Assistant. That will result in those User Accounts being re-created on the new Mac, restoring as much uncorrupted content as possible.

Migration Assistant is in your Mac's Utilities folder.

You can create a new user for each User account and then drag the contents of the folders to the corresponding folders on the new hard drive. (i.e. the contents of Documents to Documents folder, the contents of Movies to Movies folder, etc.) The only folder you shouldn't transfer would be the hidden user Library. That means that you'll need to reset some preferences. Also, leave the System folder alone. For third party applications, you should re-install them.

If I were doing this, I'd install Sierra on an external hard drive and do the work on that. Then, when everything is working the way you like, clone it to your internal drive. You can use a cloning software like SuperDuper! or CarbonCopy Cloner.

最後更新：2017-09-15 00:09:17

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