When we buy a new Mac there are several options to migrate our data or accounts to the new system through the data dump and backup wizards that they propose to us when configuring the equipment. In addition to these, you can also use the Apple Migration Assistant tool at any time to transfer data from a PC, Mac or disk to another Mac, which makes it very useful to take an account of a user to another system without complications. with all that it entails in terms of settings and data that will be copied exactly the same.
It will also give us the option to carry out this migration either because belong to the same network or they are also connected by ethernet cable.
Although we also have the option of doing this manually and logically you will wonder what the point of this is having a program that does it for me, and even though it is logical to ask this, there are times when we will not be able to use backup copies with the tools of migration. The clearest example would be at delete a user account by saving its data and without having a recent backup of the account, so it is possible that the folder of the data that is still kept for the account that you want to use will have to be restored, but we will have to create it again.
The first step would be to copy the user or home folder that we have on the system to which we are going to migrate it. To do this we will select said folder and press CMD + C to copy it, followed by Shift + ALT + CMD + V to paste it preserving access permissions. We will paste all this in the directory Macintosh HD> Users.
If we don't have the home folder and we only have the data, that is, movies, music, but without the folder. We will create it on the new computer, giving it the same short name of the user that existed, for example in the image above you see Miguel_Angel, that being the short name and having to put it the same when creating it. Once done, you just need to copy the data that we have in it.
The second step is to create a new account using the same short name that we used when creating the folder. When doing this OS X should ask us if you want to use the existing home folder for the new user to which we will say yes. In the event that this "proposal" does not jump, we should be able to associate the directory of the home folder with the created user.
To do this, once the account is created, we will do CMD + Click (Right button) and select the advanced options, we will go to the side of the field Home directory and we will select the original folder that has been copied or created for use as the user's home directory. Next, we will Click OK to save the changes.
Although with this the user and the account should work again, it is possible that permission errors will appear and that it will not go as fine as it should, so it is best to reset the permissions of the user account. With which we will restart the Mac and leave CMD + R pressed to load the recovery partition. Once selected language and others we will go to the terminal and execute the command ResetPassword, when the window for it appears, we will select the disk, the account created by us and we will reset the permissions and the ACLs for it.
More information - Create your own RAMDisk in OS X
Source - Cnet
Hello Miguel Ángel, congratulations on the article, I have found it very interesting.
I have a question, how can I pass a user and all applications to a bootable disk? In Lion 10.7
My idea is to be able to take all the work material (main user, applications, emails, fonts, etc.) on an external disk from which I can start with my user on other mac (laptop for example). What would it be like to carry the office on your back?
Is it possible to do this?
I know that making a complete copy of the disk would not work on different hardware for different reasons, here it is only a matter of having the working programs and files, on a clean and universal MacOsX.
Thank you!!
All the best