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Prep a USB Boot Drive
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Get yourself at least an 8GB USB stick
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You can download and use Apple's 'Disk Recovery Assistant'
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The issue here is that it will basically clone the Recovery Partition you already have onto the stick
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That means Lion, unless you already have a Mountain Lion Machine you can run it on.
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So boot, erase, Install Lion, boot into Lion, upgrade to Mountain Lion via App Store
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If you want to create a fresh new Mountain Lion USB stick you'll have to go the manual route
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In Lion, after buying Mountain Lion in the App Store, don't install, but quit the installer
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You should find the "Install OS X Mountain Lion" app in your Applications folder
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Right+Click (Control+click) on the Installer app and choose 'Show Package Contents'
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Drill down through the Contents > Shared Support folders and you should fine a file called "InstallESD.dmg"
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Once you've found it, leave it that window open, we'll come back to it later.
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Launch Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Insert your USB stick, it's 8GB or bigger right? And then Under the partition tab set up a single partition and under options be sure it;s set to "GUID Partition Table". Click Apple and create the partition. Then format the drive as as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" under the 'Erase' tab.
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Now go back to the window where the " " is and drag it into the sources area on the left side of the Disk Utility window
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In the main section you should now see a 'Restore' tab. Click that.
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It should show the "InstallESD.dmg" in the 'Source' field. If not drag it from the list on the left and into the source field
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Now drag the Formatted USB drive from the lest on the left into the 'Destination' field.
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Click the "Restore" button. In about 30-mins or show it should complete and you should have a bootable USB stick
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When I did this I got a a "Could not restore – Invalid argument" error message, but that can be ignored
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I read that some people avoided this error by mounting the "InstallESD.dmg" before starting the restore process
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If you'd prefer to burn a DVD. Click the 'Burn' Button instead of doing the "Restore". In the Burn settings, just drag in the "InstallESD.dmg" as the source and hit "Burn"
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Prepare for install
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I'm fanatical about backup, so really all I had to do was wait for my backups to run as scheduled
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Time Machine
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Super Duper runs each night at 3AM
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Crash Plan
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I also verified that I could read a pull data off both Super Duper and Time Machine volumes. Just spot restored files
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Had I been really thorough I should have run Disk Utility and verified the Supper Duper and Time Machine volumes
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Clean install of Mountain Lion
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Why? Oh, why would you possibly want to do this?
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Normally these days I would not advise it
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But My system had built up a ton of crud and was having all kinds of strange issues.
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I often install stuff just for testing and review, I also hack a lot in the terminal, etc.
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I really wanted a factory fresh place to start.
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Shutdown your Mac and disconnect all backup volumes, cables, etc except power and USB keyboard and mouse (if you're not wireless).
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Insert the USB stick and boot up while holding down the 'option' key. When the volume selection comes up choose the USB drive (not the Recovery volume).
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Once the Option screen comes up choose 'Disk Utility'
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Select the Mac's internal boot drive from the list and in the 'Erase' tab select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” and choose "Erase" confirming you want to format the volume.
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Close Disk Utility and back on the Installers option screen choose 'Reinstall OS X'
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Choose the drive you just erased as the destination and click "Install".
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Once it's finished, it will restart and awl you through the set-up.
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Enter your network settings, etc.
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When you see the Set-up Assistant choose the "Don't transfer now" option. We will migrate all the data manually later.
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Set up the user account using the same name I had on the old system.
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Ran all OS X Software updates
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I think I only had to do one round, but run it until there are no more updates
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You should now have a clean system with nothing on it except a admin User account and the latest version of OS X Mountain Lion.
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Manually rebuild your data
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I like to start with my User data. If you use a standard user account you'll want to create that account if you didn't earlier and log into that.
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Attach your cloned backup, you probably could also use your Time Machine but I think it's easier with the clone.
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Copied the contents specific user folders from my old Home folder on the Super Duper backup
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Documents, Desktop, Downloads, Dropbox, Movies, Music, Pictures, Public, and Sites
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Choose to overwrite where needed.
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Leaving the Library folder behind
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It's hidden in Lion BTW.
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Hold Option+Click the Go menu and Choose 'Library' to make it show up temporarily
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This can take some time, especially if you have a lot of data.
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If you have other locations, outside your Home folder on your main hard drive where you like to store documents and files restore those now too.
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I use iCloud.com, so all my Notes, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, etc. restored automatically.
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Migrate old Mail data and accounts
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Copied over the ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Mail Downloads folders
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Also moved the ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
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I think because I didn't migrate Keychains I had to re-enter the IMAP, POP, and SMTP passwords, but all the other settings were there.
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Installed iLife and iWork from Original disks
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Ran the software updates again to go those updates
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Hand copied the files from all four Library-->Application Support and Library-->Preferences locations
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Launched the Apps to make sure settings and stuff transferred properly
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Application re-install dance
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Basically did this process for all the apps I wanted to migrate
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1) Reinstall latest version of the app from original disk or download. App Store apps all re-downloaded automatically.
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2) Copied over Application Support files and Preference files
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Also check at the ~/Library root, as some apps have their own folders there. Parallels is one for me, it has my Windows image files.
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There were some Apps where I was happy to reset preferences from scratch, so I didn't migrate old data for these.
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3) Launched the app and confirmed it was working. Re-registered if necessary
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I use 1Password to store all my serial numbers and it's database is in Dropbox
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Installed these two apps first.
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4) Ran software update for that app to get any updates
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If you grabbed the latest versions from the developer site, this probably isn't needed.
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5) Lather, rinse, repeat. And yes this is tedious.
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Don't forget about menu items, system preferences, device drivers, etc.
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I had also backed up my development stuff
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Basically my MySQL databases (did a full dump) and Apache config and host files
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Restored this stuff by hand also
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Set up a safety net
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After I verified all my core apps, user accounts, settings, etc were all working I want to get at least some backup of the new system.
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In my case I start by erasing my old Time Machine drive and reconnecting it and letting it start fresh.
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The disadvantage is a potentially lose some access to historical data, but I have most of that in my Dropbox and Crash Plan archives if I really need it.
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I don't yet set back up my Super Duper clone unless I have an extra drive around I can use.
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I'll keep the Super Duper backup of my old Lion install for 3-4 weeks just in case I dissever an app or data I forgot about.
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In a couple days I'll restart up Crash Plan.
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