Q: Difference between migration assistant viz. Time Machine?

So I was setting up my new mac today and this question popped up as it said that you can do a time machine backup or use migration assistant later.

Now, I know you can't do a time machine restore if you have a different OS X now than the OS X of which you did the backup in Time Machine. Does Migration assistant skip over that problem by restoring applications from a non-compatible older OS X backup? I can't seem to find a definite answer online about it.

 

Migration Assistant just transfers over old data and settings and users and such to a new Mac. It can do this over a network, or firewire or even from a Time Machine backup.

Time Machine is purely for backup and restore of files or whole systems... but if your migrating to a new computer, Migration Assistant can use that backup to migrate over all your data, then your new machine is exactly like your old one.. all the apps, settings, preferences, user accounts, etc... it will do this from earlier versions of OSX, and the one in Lion will migrate from Windows (I think only Vista or 7).

So yes.. if you need to do a full system restore, but your Time Machine backup your restoring from is say 10.5 but you want 10.6... you can do a fresh install of 10.6, then do a migration from a 10.5 backup and get everything.

 

That sounds good.


Thanks

 

System Migration is awesome.