Ye Macce Threade

[ironbut]

I can't remember if you can just move the apps in Migration Assistant or if it includes the preferences, cashes, logs etc too. If it can just move the apps that's fine. It is the preferences and all the other old baggage that you're trying to get rid of with a clean install. IIRC, it's kind of an all or nothing process.

I suggest downloading and installing fresh apps. If your going to use Migration Assistant, it might not be any better than just upgrading the OS.

It might seem a little daunting to do this, but for most people, it isn't as tough as it might seem.

Hey, if an idiot like me can do it every year or so,..

 

If you don't normally use iCloud or sync your browser, now is a good time to do it. 

It will remember all your personal info and make the transition way easier.

 

You'll be erasing and then installing High Sierra on your SSD first. 

Since the installer will need to reformat the SSD (to the new APFS) you'll get stuck after you erase the drive. The "Install High Sierra" selection will be grayed out. 

IIRC (sorry if this isn't correct, just from memory or maybe your machine won't require this) force quit by holding down the power button than restart holding down Option and boot with the usb installer you made. This will re-format the SSD to APFS and now your install should happen just like a brand new machine would.

Let us know how this goes.

 

 

[ironbut]

Oops, forgot to tell you,..

If most of your applications were downloaded from the App Store, you can log into it and go to Your Purchases or whatever they call it and "download and install all".

That would be the second thing I'd do after opening your mail client and getting it running.

[Torpedo]

Thanks guys. I'll give it a try, although not completely sure yet. Getting the file sharing software to activate all the files it's using would be a royal PITA if importing settings from migration assistant isn't the cleanest option   Truth is that as though the computer knew what's coming, it's started to run smooth and snappy like it used to do months ago  witches or AI?

[ironbut]

 

17 minutes ago, Torpedo said:

Thanks guys. I'll give it a try, although not completely sure yet. Getting the file sharing software to activate all the files it's using would be a royal PITA if importing settings from migration assistant isn't the cleanest option 

If you're talking about having the apps see the files on the other drive, what are you using?

I have a pretty involved system with my system drive on a 6G pcie slot and my user files spread over 3 ssd's and a spinning disk for non-critical stuff (all internal).

What I've done is once High Sierra was installed on my system drive, I moved my user folder (the one with the house icon) to the spinning disk and dragged and dropped everything except the Library (which contains all those nasty old preferences). For the some of the apps that I know were working great, I copy some of the contents of the Application Support folder to get back some of my settings but that gets pretty tricky. If you want to try that, ask me and I'll tell you how I try it (you alway want to have a clear path to return to where it was before).

Here's a page on moving your home folder;

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/01/25/how-to-move-mac-user-folder-to-another-drive/

I meant to say;

The prices on ssd's are falling like a rock!

All of mine are Samsung Evo 850/860 or Evo 850/860 Pro. 

Just a year ago I bought a 2T 850 and it was a great deal at $470. 

Amazon has the 2T 860 for $347!

This is crazy but last week Dell had that same drive for,....$180!!!!!

So, if your machine can take a 2T you might think about putting everything on one drive.

I'm not sure about M2 sticks but it might be something to consider for your Hack build Dan (Samsungs are super reliable).

[Torpedo]

TBH I don't know if a mid 2010 MBP can take a much larger SSD as main internal boot drive. I paid like 250-300€ for the 250GB Crucial drive I installed a few years ago, which is working like a charm, it had no problems to be recognized, formatted and having the OS installed. I could use a larger one for sure, but at 2TB it still wouldn't hold all the files in sharing. Still at these prices it's an option to consider before the clean install.

I'm using uTorrent. On Windows I know you just need to keep one file, but that's not an option (as far as I know) on Mac. If changing the SSD and OS I'd have to get all the files re-checked, I might move to another client, although none of the ones I tried (Deluge, Transmission and qbittorrent) were of my liking, so not worth the hassle of moving all the information. Any recommendation?

[ironbut]

The easy way to check what your machine will accept is on Other World Computing's web site.

My Upgrades will open a window where you can select your machine and direct you to a page with just the stuff that will work with your mac.

Regarding uTorrent, I have no idea. 

I'm sure Dan will be more help.

[grawk]

I don’t torrent so no idea.

[ironbut]

I'm sure it's just a matter of copying and pasting a file or it's contents from your backup to your fresh uTorrent app. Maybe a uTorrent file in Library>Application Support>uTorrent.

Search their site for instructions on migrating to a new computer or importing settings.

[Torpedo]

OWC says it should take 2TB SSD. It's the 7.1 model.

I've been looking for that utorrent configuration file since I started using Mac computers, but no one seems to know about it. That information is probably a text line into some configuration file, but a "utorrent" search gives very little. Manual search isn't any better.

I've been asking at FS forums, utorrent forum and to other supposedly knowledgeable people, but no one seems to know how to transfer the seeding file list from a running uTorrent into another.

[ironbut]

I did a quick search and there should be a chapter in the users manual about Migrating utorrent.

From what I could tell, it seems like most of the files you'd need to copy from your backup are in User(your name)>Library>Application Support>uTorrent.

Take a look and see if you can find that folder. 

Also use Finder to search for any files/folders with uTorrent in the name.

Most of these files are created when you install the app. Just a couple have anything to do with you and your activities.

Once you locate these files and open them in the Finder and the file name is on the header, you can right click it and a dropdown will reveal the pathway to this file.

BTW what is it that you're trying to save? If they're downloads, can't you just copy those or move them anywhere (movies, music etc)?

[Torpedo]

That's the issue, I spent yesterday some time looking for that. I have no such "utorrent" folder anywhere to be found. There's not even a .plist file or similar with a name suggesting to be utorrent related  the only utorrent file is utorren.app in the applications folder. AFAIK Mac computers don't have it, Windows do, I know first hand. The only thing that could help to find the file keeping the seeding files list would be another applications that monitored what file changes when you add or delete a file in utorrent.

[ironbut]

Are you looking in the right Library? On a mac there are 2.

One is you system library that is found in the mac hd and the other is a your library.

To open your library, you might have to ;

http://osxdaily.com/2016/12/12/show-user-library-folder-macos-sierra/

[ironbut]

Another place you can look would be in the application folder.

Open your Applications folder in the finder and right click on the uTorrent app.

You should get a dialog with "show contents" or something like that. 

If you click on that it will show the files that make up the application. Sometimes the app will be a "Portable" app meaning it is self contained and has all it's preferences and support files included. 

If that's the case, you may be able to just drag it to any location and use it from there.

BTW If you spend 30 minutes looking for something and can't find it, say something.

Edited October 20, 2018 by ironbut

[ironbut]

I went ahead and downloaded and installed uTorrent. 

Looks like there are 5 folders/files. 

The app itself - looks like it's just the app and maybe a temp folder for downloads.

You should probably be moving your downloads or located the directory to your 1T drive. 

Open uTorrent and under Preferences look at the Directories tab to your file locations.

The folders you should probably be most concerned with are the Application Support>uTorrent folder (the one we just talked about) and the Library>Preferences>com.bittorrent.utorrent.plist

I believe if you have a fresh copy of uTorrent and copied, pasted and replaced that App Support folder and plist you should have a clone of what you have now. 

The only thing that might mess you up is having your downloaded files in that temp folder in the app. 

If you have any of those and you move them to a folder on the 1T drive and locate them in uTorrent's Preferences>Directories, it should find them. Even if it doesn't do that automatically, you can do it manually from the same place.

 

[Torpedo]

Thanks for your patience and dedication, Steve. I had made a couple of OSX versions ago the ∼/Library folder visible on Finder, but it looks like it stopped being accessible. It's not a folder I check with any frequency. Using the "Go" menu I got there.

For the last modification date I'm guessing that the filelist keeping the files information is in the com.bittorrent.utorrent.plist file. The other folders one is keeping a few thousands of .torrent files, it must be some sort of backup since the ones I've downloaded are kept in an external HDD with the data files. The other one is empty.

I've found a third folder which might contain relevant data to the program since all of its three files have been changed yesterday. It's the com.bittorrent.uTorrent.savedState which is into the Saved Application State folder. I guess I should be keeping and then transplanting all those folders into the ∼/Library folder once the system is reinstalled.

[ironbut]

Sounds like you have it.

BTW in my Application Support folder, uTorrent is listed last. I guess the "u" is actually the Greek letter mu so it's the last folder.

Those "few thousand" files are probably just records of your downloads of some kind. Exactly the kind of stuff you don't need and are just taking up hard drive space. There are some apps that parse through all that kind of stuff when you open them. Usually a waste of cpu/ram unless you need to search through those files.

IMHO, once you've downloaded a media file, move it where it belongs and let iTunes, Quicktime, VLC or whatever your fav player is, take over the job of keeping track of it (usually by importing it). 

[Torpedo]

Thanks again, Steve. My system has both  folders in the App Support an utorrent and a ?torrent. The last one is empty. I'm concerned Mac utorrent (the software) would use that pile of .torrent files into the utorrent folder as the list of files it's sharing. Thing is that I took a look into the .plist file and didn't see anything like a list of files, although such list could be into any of the other files that being .data and the like I don't know how to look into them. Maybe I shouldn't get rid of the .torrent files in the App Support until seeing if the program keeps working normally. In my preferences I don't have any backup or moving finished files into predetermined folders, I'm keeping a folder structure which allows me to keep the .torrent files (in the event a re-check is needed) and the data files so I know what I got and from where. Some are perfectly legal, others not that much , but I like sharing them as long as possible.

There's a lot of other stuff that I'd need to sort out like passwords (I don't use password management software), activation codes of purchased programs, Chrome settings (I'm not sure my favourite links and such are kept at Google's), etc. I don't even know what would happen with software I'm in the trial period. So this raises a question, if I get another Mac computer, a new one, importing all those settings directly from Time Machine into the new one would somewhat overload and fill up of shit the new system?

[ironbut]

Great!

If you've found all your folders, you should be able to "clone" your current setup on a clean install.

I didn't think about the fact that your files would be used in someone else's download so you should probably just keep everything the way it is.

If you're worried about the size of the files, right click the folder in question and select Get Info. It will tell you if it's a huge file

If you use Chrome, do you use it on any other device (iPad, iPhone etc). If you do and you can use your bookmarks, autofill passwords etc on it, your Google account is already sync'ed and it will recall all your Google data when you log into Google. 

If you don't, be sure and create a Google account and sync any of their stuff to your account. 

Same thing for iCloud. You don't have to sync everything but it will make your transition easier. 

You can always un-sync these cloud services after your up and running.

 

The same goes for any App that you downloaded from the App Store. You log in and go to My Purchases (or something like that), select all (or the ones you still want) and install. The App Store should authorize all those apps.

Actually, before you erase your system drive, go to the App Store and upgrade everything. There will probably be a couple that your downloaded directly from the developer that will have an upgrade available. The App Store looks at you Application Folder and will make upgrades available for anything it can.

Unfortunately, some of your apps that aren't supported by the App Store will need to be downloaded manually and re-authorized. Hopefully, most of the passwords for these developers sites will be available from Chrome/Google.

If you haven't changed your email address that should be easy but time consuming. You may have to ask for a password reset if you can't find yours. 

This is one of the reasons you want you get your email up and running first.

Any app that you need to search for the password, make a note with the site link, your user name and your password. If there's any weird authorization process, include that. 

If you ever have to do this again (like 4 years from now) it is unlikely that you'll remember the details. 

I keep all this kind of stuff online with Notes (comes with osx) which sync's to iCloud, and Evernote.

 

 

[ironbut]

I've never used Time Machine (I back up manually using Carbon Copy Cloner) but I would be sure that it's disabled during the entire install procedure.

You do not want the backup of your current ssd to be overwritten after you erase. You want that backup 100% intact so you can copy any files you decide you want a month or a year down the road.

[Torpedo]

I don't use Chrome much on the mobile devices, it looked to me as if it didn't have the bookmarks or passwords, but looking more carefully looks like everything is online, so that wouldn't be a problem. Thanks for the tip.

The time machine backup is into an external HDD so if unplugged it shouldn't interfere with the clean install unless I decided that I'd like to import settings from it.

I was MS beta-tester for a couple of years so on Windows I had a good protocol to save all required settings and folders, including register entries, to get all working after each clean install of every new beta version. I don't have such control on a Mac  Despite that I'm more satisfied with OSX than I ever was with Windows, despite not having a Mac version for all the tasks I used to perform. Foobar for instance is better (more convenient, I'm not speaking about sound quality) than any playback software for Mac.

[ironbut]

All my music pro buds are all quivering at the release of the new Mac Mini!

Could be just what we need (once the 3rd party ram prices go down).

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/10/new-mac-mini-packs-huge-punch/

[shellylh]

I am pretty excited that they finally updated the Mac Mini.  Looks pretty sweet!

[ironbut]

Seems like now that they've settled into the Saucer (which is really worth seeing if you get a chance), the designers at Apple have gotten down to business and released some cool stuff!

[grawk]

Of course it’s because I built my Hackintosh last week.

[Hopstretch]

It’s funny because it’s true!