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Help with setup assistant for transferring from Time Machine

K

krishnaM

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 26, 2014
210
12
Hi guys,
This is my first posting here. I moved to Mavericks from Snow Leopard last year and noticed that computer was slowly getting slower over the time (specially with Safari, Finder and switching between user accounts). I recently purchased Samsung SSD for boot drive and planning to fresh install the osx. I downloaded the Mavericks installer on to 8G usb drive and set to install the drive this weekend. I am little confused about 'Account setup' in Setup assistant. I read here in this forum messages about not to create new account and just use the setup assistant to transfer the user accounts from Time machine (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1739923/). But is it not the account setup window opens up before the migration window? Also I saw a posting saying to set up a 'test account' with administrative privileges, transfer the data from time machine and then delete the test account (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/831626/). Another post mentioned to delete the original account (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1585458/). Is that right?

Will it transfer both user accounts (me & my wife)? Both of us have administrative privileges.

Will this solve my slowing issue or do I have to download each application and manually transfer the data files from time machine/superduper backup?

I'll appreciate if you could guide me step by step so that I don't mess it up. Please excuse my ignorance as I am doing this for first time.

Thanks
Krishna
 
Last edited:
I did this earlier this year with success. Replacing the HDD on a 2010 MBP with a SSD made a BIG difference in speed. I used the Mavericks installer as you mention. I used Migration Assistant (with an external HDD and Time Machine) and once completed, the computer was just like it was before the drive swap.

The only part I don't know for sure is transferring both accounts over. Seems like it would but I did not have multiple accounts on the machine.

The upgrade is well worth it. Good luck.
 
Wow! I can't believe it. No one wants to answer my question. Thanks everybody.
 
krishnaM said:
Wow! I can't believe it. No one wants to answer my question. Thanks everybody.
Click to expand...

Maybe because you posted this question in the wrong forum? Maybe because people have better things to do than to give a detailed answer to some really basic question unrelated to a specialized device like the Mac Pro? Hmmm ... regardless getting your questions answered is a gift, not a right.
 
I am sorry for not stating in my first post that I am an owner of mac pro 2009. I am not a computer nerd like you all so even a simple basic question worries me. Basically I didn't want to make a stupid mistake and screw up the whole system and hoped some kind person will help me. As you can see I did some reading here in this forum before asking question. I am sorry again for hurting your feelings with my comment.
 
If you select to migrate your existing system from a backup drive at installation time, it will transfer all of the accounts to the new drive and when you reboot you will be able to log into your account and it should be just as you left it before the drive swap. Your wife's account will also be there and should be unaltered as she last left it. However, the restore process may take hours to perform before you can actually use the computer to see that it is working.

The alternative method (which seems to be the source of confusion) is that you can delay the restore from backup (which can take hours) and simply log in quickly by creating a new account. You can then use the OS X Migration Assistant to restore from the backup at your convenience. The warnings here are to create a "test" account initially that is different from any account on the backup. Otherwise, after the migration of your backup, you will have a duplicate named account, one from the backup, and one from the initial setup.

Hope this helps .... and good luck ....
 
Thanks for the reply. I was able to successfully install the SSD and transfer from time machine using setup assistant. Every thing went smoothly.

One question: what is com.apple.IconServicesAgent? It is taking up lot of memory. It was even higher earlier (before I exchanged the drive).
 
krishnaM said:
Thanks for the reply. I was able to successfully install the SSD and transfer from time machine using setup assistant. Every thing went smoothly.

One question: what is com.apple.IconServicesAgent? It is taking up lot of memory. It was even higher earlier (before I exchanged the drive).
Click to expand...

A quick Google search finds this...

Circa1988
Nov 7, 2013 3:48 PM
Re: What is com.apple.IconServicesAgent?
in response to alvarofromm
com.apple.IconServicesAgent is writing icon bitmap files to /var/folders/* (in my case, /var/folders/wc/[hash]/C/*. It seems to be creating folders for each registered application, and populating those folders with icon images. If you have something wrong with permissions in your /var/folders/ directory, or IconServicesAgent has issues reading icons from one or more of your registered apps/bundles, you'll likely experience issues.

However, it appears to be caching a LOT of icon info in memory as well; mine is currently sitting at around 300MB. Not too worrying, as the priority seems to be pretty low (meaning most of the data will be swapped out to disk if some other process needs memory), but it's doing a LOT of work.

In Activity Monitor, checking the Open Files and Ports tab, I see that it's STILL crawling through all my files -- partly because I've been either upgrading the OS or migrating my computer since 1988, so I've still got reams of Classic apps with resource forks -- and this Agent is going through EVERY resource fork grabbing the icons (even on software that this computer cannot run or actively display the icons of).

For open files, other than the ones it's reading icons out of, it also has these open:
/
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IconServices.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/ com.apple.IconServicesAgent.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.IconServicesAgent
/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/sRGB Profile.icc
/private/var/folders/wc/0bq4qh0s1gv8thhxr7c77wjm0000gn/C/com.apple.IconServices/ ISCacheTOC
/private/var/folders/wc/0bq4qh0s1gv8thhxr7c77wjm0000gn/C/com.apple.LaunchService s-044501.csstore
/usr/lib/dyld
/private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64
/dev/null
/dev/null
/dev/null
count=2, state=0x2

I could give more info if people are interested, but it appears that Apple needs to do a bit of tuning on this new caching mechanism -- hopefully that'll show up in the next point version.

This seems very similar to the new preferences caching feature -- and it's a really good idea, as any fiddling around or power interruptions etc. will only affect the cached items, which will then be reloaded and optimized (for display speed).
Click to expand...

From this Apple Support Thread
 
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