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new computer, old hard drives

N

nhocile

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 29, 2010
13
1
Going from a 2008 mac pro to a 2012 mac pro.

I'm wondering if it makes sense to do a fresh install of everything on the new machine, or if I should just put my old drives in and go.

I have basically no knowledge about this. It will be much more time consuming starting from scratch, but I'll do it. Please advise, thank you!
 
"If you like your setup, you can keep it" :)

Unless you feel there is something amiss with your current setup, like you messed with a bunch of system settings or drivers in the past then I wouldn't worry about it. Just do a restore/transfer.

I don't know if it's as simple as just putting the drive in the new system and hitting power. But with how strict the hardware variations are I would not doubt that it will work....assuming the OSX version you have is as new as the computer it's going into.

nhocile said:
Going from a 2008 mac pro to a 2012 mac pro.

I'm wondering if it makes sense to do a fresh install of everything on the new machine, or if I should just put my old drives in and go.

I have basically no knowledge about this. It will be much more time consuming starting from scratch, but I'll do it. Please advise, thank you!
Click to expand...
 
As long as the source Mac Pro is running 10.6.8 or newer, you can simply move the old hard drives to the new machine without any problem.
 
When I updated my 3,1 to my 5,1 - I put the old HDDs in my new machine with no issues.

However, I found out the hard way, that the sleds are different. You must use the sleds from the 5,1 machine, they are longer the the sleds in the 3,1.

Lou
 
Oh great thanks for the info.

If there's no reason to start fresh that saves me a ton of time.
 
As Nancy Reagan said - "Just Say No"

nhocile said:
Oh great thanks for the info.

If there's no reason to start fresh that saves me a ton of time.
Click to expand...

All of the other comments are valid as far as the practicality of keeping your disks.

They don't consider the factor "how soon will those six year old drives fail?".

If you're investing the money, time and effort to migrate to a new machine - my advice would be to spend just a little more and migrate at least your data to new drives.

A 4TB drive is $165. For $190 you could get a 4 TB drive with an 8 GB SSD cache.

Six year old spinning hard drives are a crash waiting to happen. Just say no, and migrate to new drives in the new system.
 
Very good point. I've replaced these drives over the years, but have completely lost track of which drives and when.

It might be safer to retire the old drives with the old computer.
 
I disagree, in my own experience, all drives never fail at once. I'm assuming you have backups and redundancy and if a drive fails, you can replace that one drive and be on the road again. Since I have had my 5,1, I have indeed lost one drive, which I replaced without a hiccup.

HDDs are pretty reliable these days, why replace working drives:confused: I wouldn't, and didn't.

Lou
 
I've got to agree with Lou on this. As long as you have backup redundancy, don't fix it if it ain't broke. However, if you want to use this as an opportunity to upgrade your drives and repurpose the older ones, that's a good plan too.
 
Just plug and play

It's miserable to reinstall everything, all new passwords, etc. What I do is use the old drives and just go back and dump OLD preferences if I haven't used them in a few years. Also there is a no go sign on prefs that don't work any way, just dump them.
 
Your call but I wouldn't do that personally and I am doing that change from a
3,1 to a 5,1 right now !!

The 3,1 had new drives when I bought it in 2010, they have been running for
4 years every day and it's system drive was a 10.5.8 that updated to 10.6.8

I will migrate some data but I will only be reusing one drive, which is a year old.

I'm taking this opportunity to install an SSD system drive, a very fast
WD Velociraptor drive for Audio recording and a WD Black for samples.

The Audio/Samples drive will be copies of the older drive's data - that's pretty
quick.

I don't want all the old "junk" installs/uninstalls and try outs sitting on a new
SSD boot drive, there are thousands of hidden files that I just don't want in
10.8.5

Also I am going 64bit with some programs and plugins, in particular to access
all of the available RAM in Logic Pro - this means an almost total reinstall anyway.

Sure, it will be several days of installs but that will be all fresh and limited to
exactly what I want to have in the new system.

That's my 2c of advice but it's just how I chose to do it. ;)

Martin.
 
If you are migrating from all spinning disks I would at least consider changing the OSX boot volume to an SSD. Even in a sled running SATA 2 the difference as always is marvellous.
 
Gav Mack said:
If you are migrating from all spinning disks I would at least consider changing the OSX boot volume to an SSD. Even in a sled running SATA 2 the difference as always is marvellous.
Click to expand...

100% agree with GavMack! Best upgrade ever changing OSX system disk from HDD to SSD.
 
BDM STUDIOS NL said:
100% agree with GavMack! Best upgrade ever changing OSX system disk from HDD to SSD.
Click to expand...

Applies to any computer never mind a Mac. SATA 2 on both windows and OSX cut the boot time to 20 secs clean install - clone with all the apps 30 seconds. SATA 3 knock another 10 seconds off those times. The biggest performance game changer since booting off floppies versus hard disks (yes I'm that old to remember lol)!
 
Gav Mack said:
Applies to any computer never mind a Mac. SATA 2 on both windows and OSX cut the boot time to 20 secs clean install - clone with all the apps 30 seconds. SATA 3 knock another 10 seconds off those times. The biggest performance game changer since booting off floppies versus hard disks (yes I'm that old to remember lol)!
Click to expand...

Yup - it's making a HUGE difference to my new 5,1 MP

Installing is taking 1/4 the time it normally does :)
( fast USB3.0 drive to SSD )

M.
 
Yes, I also recommend an SSD. I have a Samsung 840 mounted to an Apricorn Velocity x2 card for my boot drive. That's in addition to my four internal HDDs.

Lou
 
Gav Mack said:
Since I posted that been racking my brains on and off trying to remember how many floppies it took to load the first macintosh - not sure if it was six 720kb or 1.44 meg 3.5 ones. Must be another on here with a better memory than me! Tutor will remember no doubt :D
Click to expand...

I just remember how excited I was when the Mac external floppy drive became available and floppy swapping was substantially reduced.

I'll pile on with the recommendation to go SSD, and add that I did a complete fresh install on all new drives when I built my current 4,1> 5,1 hex.
 
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