shownotes_20130317

Prep a USB Boot Drive
  Get yourself at least an 8GB USB stick
  You can download and use Apple's 'Disk Recovery Assistant'
    The issue here is that it will basically clone the Recovery Partition you already have onto the stick
    That means Lion, unless you already have a Mountain Lion Machine you can run it on.
    So boot, erase, Install Lion, boot into Lion, upgrade to Mountain Lion via App Store
  If you want to create a fresh new Mountain Lion USB stick you'll have to go the manual route
    In Lion, after buying Mountain Lion in the App Store, don't install, but quit the installer
    You should find the "Install OS X Mountain Lion" app in your Applications folder
    Right+Click (Control+click) on the Installer app and choose 'Show Package Contents'
    Drill down through the Contents > Shared Support folders and you should fine a file called "InstallESD.dmg"
    Once you've found it, leave it that window open, we'll come back to it later.
    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.
    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
    In the main section you should now see a 'Restore' tab. Click that.
    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
    Now drag the Formatted USB drive from the lest on the left into the 'Destination' field.
    Click the "Restore" button. In about 30-mins or show it should complete and you should have a bootable USB stick
      When I did this I got a a "Could not restore – Invalid argument" error message, but that can be ignored
      I read that some people avoided this error by mounting the "InstallESD.dmg" before starting the restore process
    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"
Prepare for install
  I'm fanatical about backup, so really all I had to do was wait for my backups to run as scheduled
    Time Machine
    Super Duper runs each night at 3AM
    Crash Plan
    I also verified that I could read a pull data off both Super Duper and Time Machine volumes. Just spot restored files
    Had I been really thorough I should have run Disk Utility and verified the Supper Duper and Time Machine volumes
Clean install of Mountain Lion
  Why? Oh, why would you possibly want to do this?
    Normally these days I would not advise it
    But My system had built up a ton of crud and was having all kinds of strange issues.
    I often install stuff just for testing and review, I also hack a lot in the terminal, etc.
    I really wanted a factory fresh place to start.
  Shutdown your Mac and disconnect all backup volumes, cables, etc except power and USB keyboard and mouse (if you're not wireless).
  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).
  Once the Option screen comes up choose 'Disk Utility'
  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.
  Close Disk Utility and back on the Installers option screen choose 'Reinstall OS X'
  Choose the drive you just erased as the destination and click "Install".
  Once it's finished, it will restart and awl you through the set-up.
  Enter your network settings, etc.
  When you see the Set-up Assistant choose the "Don't transfer now" option. We will migrate all the data manually later.
  Set up the user account using the same name I had on the old system.
  Ran all OS X Software updates
    I think I only had to do one round, but run it until there are no more updates
  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.
Manually rebuild your data
  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.
  Attach your cloned backup, you probably could also use your Time Machine but I think it's easier with the clone.
  Copied the contents specific user folders from my old Home folder on the Super Duper backup
    Documents, Desktop, Downloads, Dropbox, Movies, Music, Pictures, Public, and Sites
    Choose to overwrite where needed.
    Leaving the Library folder behind
      It's hidden in Lion BTW.
      Hold Option+Click the Go menu and Choose 'Library' to make it show up temporarily
    This can take some time, especially if you have a lot of data.
    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.
  I use iCloud.com, so all my Notes, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, etc. restored automatically.
  Migrate old Mail data and accounts
    Copied over the ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Mail Downloads folders
    Also moved the ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
    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.
  Installed iLife and iWork from Original disks
    Ran the software updates again to go those updates
    Hand copied the files from all four Library-->Application Support and Library-->Preferences locations
    Launched the Apps to make sure settings and stuff transferred properly
  Application re-install dance
    Basically did this process for all the apps I wanted to migrate
      1) Reinstall latest version of the app from original disk or download. App Store apps all re-downloaded automatically.
      2) Copied over Application Support files and Preference files
        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.
        There were some Apps where I was happy to reset preferences from scratch, so I didn't migrate old data for these.
      3) Launched the app and confirmed it was working. Re-registered if necessary
        I use 1Password to store all my serial numbers and it's database is in Dropbox
        Installed these two apps first.
      4) Ran software update for that app to get any updates
        If you grabbed the latest versions from the developer site, this probably isn't needed.
      5) Lather, rinse, repeat. And yes this is tedious.
  Don't forget about menu items, system preferences, device drivers, etc.
  I had also backed up my development stuff
    Basically my MySQL databases (did a full dump) and Apache config and host files
    Restored this stuff by hand also
Set up a safety net
  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.
  In my case I start by erasing my old Time Machine drive and reconnecting it and letting it start fresh.
    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.
  I don't yet set back up my Super Duper clone unless I have an extra drive around I can use.
    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.
    In a couple days I'll restart up Crash Plan.