Ask TUAW: Migration Assistant, Boot Camp time problems, iWeb and more

Pat asks

Any idea if Migration Assistant in Leopard can use USB? The requirements list firewire, but seeing as tiger can boot off of USB, perhaps?

I don't have access to Leopard, but I can tell you that the Migration Assistant can read USB external drives in Tiger. You can run the Migration Assistant at any time (not just when you first install the OS); it's in /Applications/Utilities. When you run it from within OS X it will allow you to select between installing from another Mac or from another Volume. I can't imagine that it would be different with Leopard.

Tyler asks

would using an ipod in "disk mode" and a firewire connector work? for migration assistant?

As long as it appears as a mounted drive the Migration Assistant should see it.

Gary asks

When using migration assistant on a new machine, or new OS install, what exactly gets migrated? I have so much residual application crud, and other deleted application remnants, that I don't need (or want) that stuff on a new machine/install. Having never used Migration Assistant before (always opting to do it manually) I'm hesitant that all that stuff will get moved along too.

You can choose what you want to move. You can select particular users. You can select Applications. You can select system settings. Personally, I only use it to transfer user files and user specific settings.

michael asks

i have a, probably stupid, question: whenever i use bootcamp to boot into winxp to do a few things, be it five mins or a few hours, when i reboot back into my tiger partition the time is always off. usually its a few hours behind... is there anyway to fix this? whenever i correct the time i always click the lock to "prevent further changes".

This was supposed to be fixed in Boot Camp 1.3, so be sure to upgrade to the latest Boot Camp if you haven't already. That said, another reader suggested that probably the easiest solution is to turn off automatic time synchonization in Windows. However this hint at MacOSXHints offers a perhaps better solution. Basically it involves using Ligon to run the ntpdate -u command at start up (complete instructions here) to force OS X to resynchronize with the internet time server. If your machine doesn't have network access at boot).

If you're more adventurous you might try this trick which involves editing the Windows registry, but that's always a little bit dangerous.

Jinesh asks

I just have a general question: I have a MBP, and I been hearing a lot about 10.5 and time machine. I was wondering what is a good mac compatible external hard drive (which would also work with the time machine)? I am thinking about buying a good hard drive and partition it: one for time machine and another for mirror hard drive. How can I partition an external drive?

We've hashed out this question before about which external hard drive is best. I suggest you read through the comments there. In any case, I highly recommend that you go with a FireWire external drive rather than a USB drive.

As far as partitioning, all you have to do is launch the Disk Utility in /Applications/Utilities. Select the drive and then the Partition tab. Keep in mind that in Tiger partitioning is destructive. However in the forthcoming Leopard version of Disk Utility, you'll be able to partition a disk without erasing it.

Michael asks

Can the Mac's hard drive be cloned to a FW drive that isn't empty? I have a 60GB drive on my Mac Mini, but a 500GB FW drive that has plenty of space to clone my drive to, but it isn't empty (my iTunes library is on it).

Yes, but you'll want to partition it first and then clone to that partition using something like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, Tiger's Disk Utility only allows destructive partitioning so you'll either need to wait for Leopard or use a third-party disk utility like DiskStudio ($49). Remember, however, to back up before you do.

Update: Although I still think it's a good idea, as pointed out below you, don't have to re-partition before cloning with CCC.

Actually, now that I think of it, here's another question: My iTunes library is on the external drive, but the library file is on my internal drive on the Mini, under ~/Music. How can I get that to go into the same /Music directory on the external drive, so I could, theoretically, blow away the ~/Music folder (to avoid confusion)?

We covered this in a How To last year.

brandon asks

Could you guys give a tutorial on putting up a site made with iweb without using .mac?

Well the only difference is that instead of choosing "Publish to .Mac" in the File menu you choose "Publish to a Folder..." Once that's done you just need to upload the contents of that folder to the root folder for your site on your webserver with a FTP client like Transmit.