I tried this a while ago and some of the things that don't work for me now under any circumstances - work for the new user. What does that mean? How come a user "gets broken"? Any way to fix it?
Occasionally you will get random glitches on a machine that happen due to corrupted hard drive sectors and the only way to really get rid of those is to back stuff up and zero the drive as it skips the bad sectors. Sometimes you get issues with the files/folders themselves. As for the causes, it could be due to bad restarts, bad ram, drive overheating or just a drive malfunction. Drives have certain error tolerance levels for all sorts of failures and it's possible to go outside those on occasions and still keep working just fine.
Apps like Techtool Pro list the history of the drive performance and how close the drive got to exceeding these tolerance levels. It would also do a more thorough filesystem check as would DiskWarrior to let you know if there is a filesystem error that Disk Utility missed. Narrowing down the exact causes of glitches is usually just an exercise in frustration.
If the iphone backup is working with the new user, the easiest thing to do would be to migrate to the new user. It's quite straightforward to move your stuff across, though you have to pick a different short name. You will know how to make a new user and allow admin settings. Then you just copy over music, documents etc and then change their ownership to the new user. To do this you can use the command sudo chown -R <new username> <drag in folder> in a terminal or use the Finder Get Info and change owner in the permissions panel and apply to enclosed.
Try and avoid copying folders to the new user and instead just do files that you need. In itunes, copy over the itunes library file on its own. The music folders should be ok though.
Occasionally you will get random glitches on a machine that happen due to corrupted hard drive sectors and the only way to really get rid of those is to back stuff up and zero the drive as it skips the bad sectors. Sometimes you get issues with the files/folders themselves. As for the causes, it could be due to bad restarts, bad ram, drive overheating or just a drive malfunction. Drives have certain error tolerance levels for all sorts of failures and it's possible to go outside those on occasions and still keep working just fine.
Apps like Techtool Pro list the history of the drive performance and how close the drive got to exceeding these tolerance levels. It would also do a more thorough filesystem check as would DiskWarrior to let you know if there is a filesystem error that Disk Utility missed. Narrowing down the exact causes of glitches is usually just an exercise in frustration.
If the iphone backup is working with the new user, the easiest thing to do would be to migrate to the new user. It's quite straightforward to move your stuff across, though you have to pick a different short name. You will know how to make a new user and allow admin settings. Then you just copy over music, documents etc and then change their ownership to the new user. To do this you can use the command sudo chown -R <new username> <drag in folder> in a terminal or use the Finder Get Info and change owner in the permissions panel and apply to enclosed.
Try and avoid copying folders to the new user and instead just do files that you need. In itunes, copy over the itunes library file on its own. The music folders should be ok though.
OK. Things seem to be working well under the different user - Thanks. Next challenge is to find out how to easily move iPhoto/iMovie/iTunes libraries to the new user. I didn't understand the explanation...
OK. Things seem to be working well under the different user - Thanks. Next challenge is to find out how to easily move iPhoto/iMovie/iTunes libraries to the new user. I didn't understand the explanation...
What you would do is move the files you want out of your home folder when logged into the old account (not to the desktop as that's still part of the old account). Then when you switch to the new account, you can simply move those files into the correct folder.
So for example, you could move the contents of your old music folder out and into a temporary folder. Then switch to the new user and move it from the temp folder to the new home folder.
This seems like it would be the job done but all the files have permissions and owners and they will be set to the old user. So you need to either perform the command in the above post or use the get info box on the folder you moved and change the owner to your new account and then apply this change to all the files inside the folder.
Do this for all the data you want to move over. I'd probably leave the preferences behind and as I say, try to avoid copying folders and replacing in case it brings the problem back again.
Try and stick to Documents, Movies, Music and Pictures. Leave the Library folder.
So to begin:
- log into the old account
- in the root folder, where the applications folder is, make a temp folder called say items.
- open the Music folder and drag out your iTunes folder into the items folder.
- then log back into the new account and open the new music folder and the items folder.
- take all the music from the old iTunes Music folder and put it into the new one along with the iphone apps folder etc.
- open up itunes and if your music isn't in the list, go to preferences > advanced and turn off copy music into folder, hit ok and then drag the itunes music folder onto the window. It will index all the files.
- once everything looks ok, you can select the itunes folder and hit get info. In the permissions box at the bottom, set the top menu to show the new user. Then hit the apply to enclosed button.
Do the same for the other folders but make sure that itunes works ok after you move it.
Comments
I tried this a while ago and some of the things that don't work for me now under any circumstances - work for the new user. What does that mean? How come a user "gets broken"? Any way to fix it?
Occasionally you will get random glitches on a machine that happen due to corrupted hard drive sectors and the only way to really get rid of those is to back stuff up and zero the drive as it skips the bad sectors. Sometimes you get issues with the files/folders themselves. As for the causes, it could be due to bad restarts, bad ram, drive overheating or just a drive malfunction. Drives have certain error tolerance levels for all sorts of failures and it's possible to go outside those on occasions and still keep working just fine.
Apps like Techtool Pro list the history of the drive performance and how close the drive got to exceeding these tolerance levels. It would also do a more thorough filesystem check as would DiskWarrior to let you know if there is a filesystem error that Disk Utility missed. Narrowing down the exact causes of glitches is usually just an exercise in frustration.
If the iphone backup is working with the new user, the easiest thing to do would be to migrate to the new user. It's quite straightforward to move your stuff across, though you have to pick a different short name. You will know how to make a new user and allow admin settings. Then you just copy over music, documents etc and then change their ownership to the new user. To do this you can use the command sudo chown -R <new username> <drag in folder> in a terminal or use the Finder Get Info and change owner in the permissions panel and apply to enclosed.
Try and avoid copying folders to the new user and instead just do files that you need. In itunes, copy over the itunes library file on its own. The music folders should be ok though.
Occasionally you will get random glitches on a machine that happen due to corrupted hard drive sectors and the only way to really get rid of those is to back stuff up and zero the drive as it skips the bad sectors. Sometimes you get issues with the files/folders themselves. As for the causes, it could be due to bad restarts, bad ram, drive overheating or just a drive malfunction. Drives have certain error tolerance levels for all sorts of failures and it's possible to go outside those on occasions and still keep working just fine.
Apps like Techtool Pro list the history of the drive performance and how close the drive got to exceeding these tolerance levels. It would also do a more thorough filesystem check as would DiskWarrior to let you know if there is a filesystem error that Disk Utility missed. Narrowing down the exact causes of glitches is usually just an exercise in frustration.
If the iphone backup is working with the new user, the easiest thing to do would be to migrate to the new user. It's quite straightforward to move your stuff across, though you have to pick a different short name. You will know how to make a new user and allow admin settings. Then you just copy over music, documents etc and then change their ownership to the new user. To do this you can use the command sudo chown -R <new username> <drag in folder> in a terminal or use the Finder Get Info and change owner in the permissions panel and apply to enclosed.
Try and avoid copying folders to the new user and instead just do files that you need. In itunes, copy over the itunes library file on its own. The music folders should be ok though.
OK. Things seem to be working well under the different user - Thanks. Next challenge is to find out how to easily move iPhoto/iMovie/iTunes libraries to the new user. I didn't understand the explanation...
OK. Things seem to be working well under the different user - Thanks. Next challenge is to find out how to easily move iPhoto/iMovie/iTunes libraries to the new user. I didn't understand the explanation...
What you would do is move the files you want out of your home folder when logged into the old account (not to the desktop as that's still part of the old account). Then when you switch to the new account, you can simply move those files into the correct folder.
So for example, you could move the contents of your old music folder out and into a temporary folder. Then switch to the new user and move it from the temp folder to the new home folder.
This seems like it would be the job done but all the files have permissions and owners and they will be set to the old user. So you need to either perform the command in the above post or use the get info box on the folder you moved and change the owner to your new account and then apply this change to all the files inside the folder.
Do this for all the data you want to move over. I'd probably leave the preferences behind and as I say, try to avoid copying folders and replacing in case it brings the problem back again.
Try and stick to Documents, Movies, Music and Pictures. Leave the Library folder.
So to begin:
- log into the old account
- in the root folder, where the applications folder is, make a temp folder called say items.
- open the Music folder and drag out your iTunes folder into the items folder.
- then log back into the new account and open the new music folder and the items folder.
- take all the music from the old iTunes Music folder and put it into the new one along with the iphone apps folder etc.
- open up itunes and if your music isn't in the list, go to preferences > advanced and turn off copy music into folder, hit ok and then drag the itunes music folder onto the window. It will index all the files.
- once everything looks ok, you can select the itunes folder and hit get info. In the permissions box at the bottom, set the top menu to show the new user. Then hit the apply to enclosed button.
Do the same for the other folders but make sure that itunes works ok after you move it.