USMT-like option for migrating user accounts to new machine

rstasel
Valued Contributor

We're looking for a good USMT-like (USMT stands for User State Migration Tool, a product Microsoft provides that allows backing up user directories to a location, then restoring them back) option for macOS so we can block Migration Assistant's use. It breaks MDM if users don't know what not to check, and we see end users go home after being handed a computer and run it themselves to restore from a Time Machine drive they have at home... which breaks MDM. 

So, been looking at USMT type options. The only one that really stands out and looks good is: https://github.com/thebrandicorn/macusmt and I've been hacking away at it, but I'm curious what others are doing. The idea being to backup a user to a network share from their old machine, then on new machine run a restore to put all the user data back. Then manually create the account and have it adopt the existing home folder. 

Anyone have something they use for this? CCC or SuperDuper could be options, though we'd have to buy licensing and I'm not seeing a lot as far as scriptability in these (we want to give techs the ability to run the "backup" and "restore" commands relatively simply. 

Thanks! 

2 REPLIES 2

kevinthegreat
New Contributor

cool. Though doesn't work for M1's... =/ 

But will look at this as possible source material.