Migrating to New Mac Soon - Avoiding Pitfalls

[Brian in Charlotte]

Good morning/afternoon/evening/night!

I'm close to migrating from current 2010 MacPro w/Yosemite & PT11.3 to a new iMac (i7 chip w/system SSD & SSD external thunderbolt enclosure to record to) Wondering what things I need to be aware of with regard to PT migration. I will want to have my current MacPro has a backup, should something happen to my new machine.

Questions: (1) Will I be able to use ProTools on the backup machine should something happen to my new one and it needs to go in the shop? (2) Getting PT on my new machine...I'm guessing I download it from my user account w/AVID? (3) I don't want to go into this blind, thus any insight you can provide would be very much appreciated.

Brian

[Drew Mazurek]

Cue Janne!!

[VRW]

Originally Posted by Brian in Charlotte

I will want to have my current MacPro has a backup, should something happen to my new machine.

Good idea.

Originally Posted by Brian in Charlotte

Questions: (1) Will I be able to use ProTools on the backup machine should something happen to my new one and it needs to go in the shop?

Why not? Your 2010 MacPro even is officially qualified for PT11 by Avid.
Have a look at "Mac Pro".
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...pple-Computers

You only need to take the iLok 2 with the PT11 license on it and connect it
to your old MacPro. If you have installed PT11 on it you just can go on working
in the case your new one will not be available for whatever reason.

Originally Posted by Brian in Charlotte

(2) Getting PT on my new machine...I'm guessing I download it from my user account w/AVID?

Yeah, only log in to your Avid account, go to My Products, find the latest PT11
installer and the latest version of Air Creative Collection (all the PT plugins and VIs),
download both and install it on which computer ever.
Only make sure to always have your iLok connected to the computer you want to
work with PT on. Then you will be good to go.

Originally Posted by Brian in Charlotte

I don't want to go into this blind, thus any insight you can provide would be very much appreciated.

Back up your completely updated OS before installing Pro Tools and your hardware drivers.

Don´t forget to do all the computer optimizations before installing Pro Tools.
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/t.../Optimize-10-9 (will work for 10.10 as well)

I personally would do a 2nd backup after having installed Pro Tools before installing the 003
hardware driver.
It´s just that there is a certain possibility there may occur some issues with the 003 driver
and if, you would not have to install PT and all your plugins again. Just as a suggestion.

Finally make sure to have all the latest, right versions of all your 3rd party plugins and VIs
as non-compatible plugins very often are the reason for errors and issues with Pro Tools 11.

Also double check the Firewire cable as well as the Thunderbolt-to-Firewire-adapter as to the
connection of your 003.
To be honest the 003 is the only part of your whole system which involves the risk of issues
just because of being kinda legacy technical wise as well as to the kind of connection.

Everything else should work great.

If you should experience any problems with the 003 and you would replace it with another one
you may mind to get one which you could use with both computers, your new one as well as your
older Mac Pro as to the type of connection.

Btw such an OWC SSD would be a good solution for your audio drive as these don´t need Trim
support as well as your Apple SSD doesn´t need it either. So you avoid to use Trim Enabler and to
manipulate the OS system which would be necessary if using any other 3rd party SSD like Samsung,
Crucial, etc.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSD7E6G960/

Hope that will answer your questions.


Wishing you the best of success and tons of fun with your new gear,


VRW



Mac Mini i7Quad, 16GB Ram, MBP Mid 2012 2,5GHz i5, 16GB Ram, Mac OSX 10.10.1 Yosemite, Apogee Quartet+Duet 2
Genelec Active, Yamaha NS10, Pro Tools 11.3, Logic 10.1, Waves, MCDSP, Duende Native, HOFA, IK Multimedia, NI etc.

[Brian in Charlotte]

So nice of you to lend such great info - thanks so much. Gonna keep this handy!!

Brian

[Brian in Charlotte]

OK, got the new iMac sitting in the box - gotta wait till the weekend to set up (painful). Since Migration Assistant is, as Apple puts it kind of a 1 shot deal and you either choose to bring in ALL Applications or NONE, that means I have to bring in ProTools 11 with it, or uninstall ProTools11 before I migrate. Then I can do a fresh install on the new machine. For the past 2 weeks I've been having "not responding" issues with my system whereby I can't get PT to do anything, then the ball goes and I can't just shut PT down and restart - gotta start the whole machine before PT will work again. In looking at Activity Monitor it did show CoreAudio not responding, so wondering if that's the issue.

Anyway - question:

1) Should I uninstall PT11 from my current MacPro before doing the Migration to the new iMac 5k?

2) Do I install the driver "before" PT11 or the other way around?

3) Other tips?

Thanks!

[Brian in Charlotte]

Anybody?

[VRW]

Originally Posted by Brian in Charlotte

1) Should I uninstall PT11 from my current MacPro before doing the Migration to the new iMac 5k?

2) Do I install the driver "before" PT11 or the other way around?

3) Other tips?

1) You definitely should not do any migration from another system for a well working Pro Tools system!
This is officially not recommended by Avid.
You may back up all data you will need later again like PT sessions, audio files, samples, presets from plugins
and VIs on an external device (can be a USB drive as well) which you later may copy back manually one after
the other to the dedicated locations.
Means, PT sessions and audio files to your audio drive, presets and samples etc. to your OS drive (you can have
your samples on the OS drive as it is one of those super fast Apple PCie Flash drives you have).
Actually you should do a completely fresh install of all of your music stuff, all your music applications, plugins and
VIs to get a well working Pro Tools 11 system.
Before installing Pro Tools you may do all the optimization stuff.
http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/t.../Optimize-10-9
(works for Yosemite 10.10 as well)

2) You may install Pro Tools first (including all the Pro Tools plugins and VIs) and do a system backup before installing
any driver!
I would recommend to use this app for the backup as it works flawlessly with Yosemite 10.10 and can be used for free
for 30 days. https://bombich.com
Just download and install this app, connect any external drive to your iMac (can be any external USB 2 drive as well),
open the application and get your system cloned on the external drive.
It´s just that very often hardware drivers do mess up the whole system.
So if this may happen to you as well you easily can go back to the cloned system instead of having to do a complete
new clean install of your whole system (which in most cases is the only solution after serious hardware driver issues).

To check if PT11 would work properly before having installed your audio hardware driver you just may use the internal
audio engine of your iMac.
Open any small-middle sized PT session and play it back via the audio engine of your iMac. This should work out.
Then backup your whole system on an external drive, after that you may go on installing the driver.

3) Do a new clean install of the non-responding system! This will be the only realistic chance to get back a well working
Pro Tools system.
You may follow the same steps like mentioned before which will be to do a clean install of your Mac OS system, followed
by the Pro Tools installation (including Air Creative Collection=Pro Tools plugins+VIs), followed by a system backup,
followed by the installation of everything else.

Further you may consider getting another audio interface instead of the 003. Theoretically there is a current driver by
Avid however in real life there had been many 003 users who even couldn´t get their 003s to work properly with Mac OS
Mavericks and PT11 anymore. Unfortunately it has become kinda legacy hardware for all the latest stuff technical wise.
You of course may try it out and if it will work it will be great but there´s a chance that it might not work well anymore
with your recent system.

Just as a suggestion, if you might be on a budget you could find some Focusrite units which offer the exact same amount
of I/Os and connection options for about $300-500.-.

This one for example offers exact the same stuff like the 003 including ADAT+SPDIF.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SaffPro26
This one offers even more I/Os and is widely and successfully used with PT11.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SaffPro40

If money is not an issue for you I would recommend a Thunderbolt audio interface like the Universal Audio Apollo or the
new Apogee Ensemble.

The Apollo Quad
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ApolloQuadTB
The Apogee Ensemble
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/EnsembleTB

These are really high end audio interfaces and used by many many pro studios.
Anyway also the Focusrite interfaces will do a decent job and work better than most of the old 003s with OS X Yosemite+PT11.

I´m aware of that this all may be a lot of work to do but believe me, this will be the only chance that you finally will have a
stable, well working high quality Pro Tools 11 system.
If you would see then that your complete system would work as it should finally I would do a backup of the whole system again.
So you always could come back to that one without having to do all the work from scratch in the case of any problem.

Wishing you the very best of success and much fun with your new cool iMac ,


cheers, VRW




Mac Mini i7Quad, 16GB Ram, MBP Mid 2012 2,5GHz i5, 16GB Ram, Mac OSX 10.10.2 Yosemite, Apogee Quartet+Duet 2
Genelec Active, Yamaha NS10, Pro Tools 11.3, Logic 10.1, Waves, MCDSP, Duende Native, HOFA, IK Multimedia, NI etc.

[Darryl Ramm]

Yep. Migration Assassin, shudder.

Only use that to bring over user files and accounts. Never applications or drivers, it is more reliable to reinstall those from the vendor's installers. And often you may even be netter off just creating user accounts by hand and manually moving over document folders etc. (there is so much complex garbage in users Library folders that is not a bad idea to start fresh).

[Brian in Charlotte]

MANNNNN........a lot of work is right, but I certainly appreciate the heads up. I do have my System Drive and my Audio Drive cloned via SuperDuper already. I'll also make a TimeMachine Backup just so I have additional redundancy.

Only trouble is, if I don't Migrate, then all my Mail etc. won't come over and I don't know what I'd do. Gotta get my head wrapped around it!!

[Brian in Charlotte]

I do prefer the idea of FRESH everything - just not clear on how to get those other programs/licenses back on a new machine. I don't want them to say "you have to pay again" or something. I know my Mac Office program is out of licenses, so if I don't migrate it, I lose it? Head is spinning.

I'm very computer literate......but never done fresh install from mac to mac before. For example, what about iTunes and all the files I have there. Geesh