Migrating User Account

[InsertCatchyNic]

So, my hard drive died, but through the use of Disk Warrior I was able to recover my data, but the hard drive is failed. So, I was forced to copy the data from one drive to another. Installed Yosemite on the new drive. Now, I thought I could just copy the user directories from the failed drive to the new drive and OS X on the new drive would see the user directories that I copied over. Well the new installation of OS X doesn't see any of the user directories that I copied over.

So, I am at a bit of a stand still. I have all of my data in the user directory, but how do I get the new installation of OS X to see those directories as users on the new installation of OS X?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, because this has been driving me crazy.

ds

Mac Pro 3,1, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

 

[Bruno09]

Hi,

could you please post a screen shot of your /Users folder ?

 

[InsertCatchyNic]

I won't be able to post a screenshot, at work at the moment.

If you can tell me what you are looking for I can tell you if it is there.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Migration Assistant?

So, my hard drive died, but through the use of Disk Warrior I was able to recover my data, but the hard drive is failed. So, I was forced to copy the data from one drive to another. Installed Yosemite on the new drive. Now, I thought I could just copy the user directories from the failed drive to the new drive and OS X on the new drive would see the user directories that I copied over. Well the new installation of OS X doesn't see any of the user directories that I copied over.

So, I am at a bit of a stand still. I have all of my data in the user directory, but how do I get the new installation of OS X to see those directories as users on the new installation of OS X?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, because this has been driving me crazy.

ds

Mac Pro 3,1, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Why did you not use Migration Assistant to restore your user(s)/apps/preferences/data etc. from a backup Time Machine / Carbon Clone Copy or so, to your clean installed OSX 10.10? For me this has always been a very successful routine!

 

[InsertCatchyNic]

Thank you for the obvious suggestion of recovering from a Time Machine backup. Unfortunately my Time Machine backup drive failed a month ago, click of death.

Which is why the question I asked wasn't to recover from a Time Machine backup or use Carbon Cloner to clone a drive.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

You've really run out of luck...

Thank you for the obvious suggestion of recovering from a Time Machine backup. Unfortunately my Time Machine backup drive failed a month ago, click of death.

Which is why the question I asked wasn't to recover from a Time Machine backup or use Carbon Cloner to clone a drive.

You've really run out of luck then! Sorry to hear your ™ drive failed as well. I don't have experience copying user directories, so can't help you with this.

My final tip : get that ™ disk up-and-running again asap!

Good luck restoring your data back to your new OSX 10.10 drive.

Cheers

 

[InsertCatchyNic]

Thanks and I hope I didn't sound too much of as a$$ in my reply.

Using computers for 20+ years and never had a situation like this where all my data can go poof. But I thought I could go without the back up drive until I could get the cash together to replace my time machine drive. And as more time goes by where things don't go poof you think that you don't need the back up drive.

I thought it would be a simple matter of copying the user directories from the user folder of the failed drive into user folder of the new drive and OS X would magically see the added users and all would be right. Serves me right I guess.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

Thanks and I hope I didn't sound too much of as a$$ in my reply.

No! you certainly not sounded like one.

Using computers for 20+ years and never had a situation like this where all my data can go poof. But I thought I could go without the back up drive until I could get the cash together to replace my time machine drive. And as more time goes by where things don't go poof you think that you don't need the back up drive.

"Using computers for 20+ years" & "I thought I could go without the back up drive" => I don't know what your data contains but anyway, very bad thinking

I thought it would be a simple matter of copying the user directories from the user folder of the failed drive into user folder of the new drive and OS X would magically see the added users and all would be right. Serves me right I guess.

Perhaps some more advanced users on MR can help you restoring your user folder!
I wish you much luck and even more wisdom

Cheers

 

[NoBoMac]

One way to go about this:

Create the user accounts first. Plug in drive.

Login to each account. Have window or tab open on the home folder. Navigate to drive copy of user's data. Select all and copy into current account folder window/tab.

Hopefully, will copy everything over and assume user-id and group-id correctly. To be extra safe, logged in as the selected user, bring up a terminal window and enter command:

id

Will get something like below. Note the first two items between parentheses:

uid=502(myuserid) gid=20(staff)

Then issue following commands, substituting appropriate two values from above (userid left of colon, gid to the right):

cd
find . -type d -exec chown myuserid:staff {} \;
find . -type f -exec chown myuserid:staff {} \;

 

[Weaselboy]

I thought it would be a simple matter of copying the user directories from the user folder of the failed drive into user folder of the new drive and OS X would magically see the added users and all would be right. Serves me right I guess.

You won't be able to just wholesale drag over the uses folder, but you should be able to drag over the contents of sub folders like Documents for example.

Mount the drive then do a command-i for get info and make sure you have checked the box at the bottom to ignore permissions on the drive. Can you then use Finder to poke around in there and at least see the files you want to move over? For example, drag a few files from the Documents folder over to the desktop on the new install... does that work?

If that won't work, I suspect the issue is related to the way Disk Warrior recovered the data.

 

[InsertCatchyNic]

Hmm, weasel that is interesting. I can certainly create the account within the new installation of OS-X. I can also see my data in finder. So I can copy my data over the way that you described.

I might have to turn on the show hidden folders tag in order to copy the ~\library folder over from the diskwarrior recovery. Since that is a big probelm i am having now, not being able to see the Library folder from an account I am not logged into.

 

[Fishrrman]

I second weaselboy's approach above.

This can work for the contents of folders such as
- Desktop
- Documents
- Movies
- Music
- Pictures

It may also work for "Mail". (never actually tried it)

Not sure if it will work for "Library", might be worth a try.

Note that you CANNOT copy the above -folders themselves-.
You CAN copy the CONTENTS of these folders.
Important distinction to be made there.

 

[Weaselboy]

Hmm, weasel that is interesting. I can certainly create the account within the new installation of OS-X. I can also see my data in finder. So I can copy my data over the way that you described.

I might have to turn on the show hidden folders tag in order to copy the ~\library folder over from the diskwarrior recovery. Since that is a big probelm i am having now, not being able to see the Library folder from an account I am not logged into.

Given the way this went down with the data recovery and all, I think you are inviting no end of trouble by trying to copy over settings from ~/Library. I would just focus on your personal data in those data folders I mentioned.

You should be able to see the ~/Library folder on the other machine by adjusting this path then click the Go menu then Go to folder and paste it in.

/Volumes/externaldiskname/Macintosh HD/Users/username/Library

Just change the bolded part to the real names.

 

[InsertCatchyNic]

So, I ran Diskwarrior again and by default diskwarrior shows all hidden files. I copied my user directory into \user. Then I created a user account with the same short name as the folder name in \user. And all was good to go.

I did have to re-install a few items, like istats and parallels. Most other software that needed authentication asked for the admin password and i was good to go.

My Time Machine backup is progressing as I type this, last time I get caught with my digital pants down ever again.

 

[m4v3r1ck]

So, I ran Diskwarrior again and by default diskwarrior shows all hidden files. I copied my user directory into \user. Then I created a user account with the same short name as the folder name in \user. And all was good to go.



I did have to re-install a few items, like istats and parallels. Most other software that needed authentication asked for the admin password and i was good to go.



My Time Machine backup is progressing as I type this, last time I get caught with my digital pants down ever again.

Congrats with your restore! Did you manage to set your user# to 501 for the use of your apps as original user?

Good to read that your is running again!

Cheers