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G0Ducks · Jul 15, 2006, 08:28 PM

I have a G5 tower (which I am giving my wife) that has my user account. However, I am getting a new Macbook Pro this Monday.

Is there a way to migrate my user account to the new MBP without loosing passwords, bookmarks, prefs, emails, data that kind of stuff?

In general, how would I go about doing this without using my iPod as a suitcase?

Yours,

R

Thinine · Jul 15, 2006, 08:35 PM

Migration Assistant, either manually or through the OS X installer, should work fine if you connect the G5 to the MBP in FireWire target disk mode (hold T at startup).

msuper69 · Jul 15, 2006, 08:35 PM

Run the Migration Assistant from your new MacBook Pro.

That way you won't LOSE anything.

G0Ducks · Jul 16, 2006, 02:02 PM

OK... So I connect my MBP to my G5, restarting the G5 in Target disk mode...
When all is running, I start the Migration Assistant on the MBP (in Utilities folder?)

What happens then? Does it look for users or something?

Thanks for your help so far,

R

Chuckit · Jul 16, 2006, 02:12 PM

The first time you turn on the computer, when it asks you to create the first user account, it'll give you the option of running Migration Assistant (something along the lines of "copy users and settings from my current Mac"). Then it will give you a list of things that you can choose to copy over, with all of them checked by default. Then you just push the copy button and you have a perfect copy of your old user accounts on the new computer.

G0Ducks · Jul 16, 2006, 02:23 PM

SWEET!

Glad it is going to be so easy... Now I have to get a male/male Firewire cable

R

Cadaver · Jul 16, 2006, 08:25 PM

Originally Posted by G0Ducks

SWEET!

Now I have to get a male/male Firewire cable

R

All FireWire cables are male to male (or at least all 6-pin FireWire 400 cables are).

G0Ducks · Jul 16, 2006, 08:54 PM

strange...
The firewire cable that came with my old G4 400 has a regular squarish end and then a really smallish end, as if it were there to plug into a camera or something... Oh well, I will just buy one when I get my new mac.

Thanks a ton everyone. This community rocks.

R

Velocity211 · Jul 16, 2006, 09:00 PM

Originally Posted by G0Ducks

strange...
The firewire cable that came with my old G4 400 has a regular squarish end and then a really smallish end, as if it were there to plug into a camera or something... Oh well, I will just buy one when I get my new mac.

Thanks a ton everyone. This community rocks.

R

The small end has 4-pins instead of 6. The two pins for power is missing. That is usually used for DV camcorders. You could get a 4-pin to 6-pin adapter. I think that would work.

G0Ducks · Jul 16, 2006, 09:29 PM

Thanks. I'll look into that. It may be more cost effective to get the new cord. I wonder if a one will come with the MBP? Makes sense to include one with a laptop.

R

Brass · Jul 16, 2006, 09:56 PM

Originally Posted by G0Ducks

Thanks. I'll look into that. It may be more cost effective to get the new cord. I wonder if a one will come with the MBP? Makes sense to include one with a laptop.

R

Did not get one with the MacBook (non-pro).

G5man · Jul 16, 2006, 11:31 PM

Firewire cable is sold separately.

CharlesS · Jul 16, 2006, 11:31 PM

Originally Posted by Velocity211

The small end has 4-pins instead of 6. The two pins for power is missing. That is usually used for DV camcorders. You could get a 4-pin to 6-pin adapter. I think that would work.

Sheesh, just get a new 6-pin to 6-pin FireWire cable. It'd probably be cheaper (and would make a lot more sense) than getting a 6-pin mail to 4-pin female cable, if such a thing even exists!

G0Ducks · Jul 17, 2006, 12:11 AM

That's the plan. Love your sig Charles!

R

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Sheesh, just get a new 6-pin to 6-pin FireWire cable. It'd probably be cheaper (and would make a lot more sense) than getting a 6-pin mail to 4-pin female cable, if such a thing even exists!

G0Ducks · Jul 17, 2006, 01:01 AM

wow... Just looked at my user folder! It is 30GB!!!
Is this going to be ok for what we are talking about here???

R

LudwigVan123 · Jul 17, 2006, 01:28 AM

Why is the size an issue? The MacBook Pro should have a fairly large hard drive. And you can delete files and such after the transfer.

Chuckit · Jul 17, 2006, 01:52 AM

Originally Posted by G0Ducks

wow... Just looked at my user folder! It is 30GB!!!
Is this going to be ok for what we are talking about here???

R

The MacBook Pro has an 80 GB hard disk. Unless you've got 50 GB outside your Users folder, you're fine.

nuggetman · Jul 17, 2006, 09:49 PM

go to target

you can get a 6-foot firewire cable with 6 pins on each end (plus two 4-pin adapters!) for only $14

Brass · Jul 18, 2006, 12:30 AM

Originally Posted by G0Ducks

wow... Just looked at my user folder! It is 30GB!!!
Is this going to be ok for what we are talking about here???

R

Install OmniDiskSweeper. It will tell you (hierarchically) which directories/files are taking up all the disk space. Very handy utility. Makes it very easy to reduce the amount of disk you are using in an intelligent way.

real · Jul 18, 2006, 01:33 PM

Just a reminder,

Before you do the migration make a backup.
better to be safe than sorry.

Dillon-K · Jul 20, 2006, 03:33 AM

why make a backup? will it delete this stuff off his G5? or is that just one of those "had to say so" kind of things?

Gee4orce · Jul 21, 2006, 10:43 AM

WhatSize does the same as OmniDisk Sweeper, but is free. It's probably worth clearing out all the old junk you've accumulated before you migrate, especially cache files (Microsoft apps seem to be a particular culprit for leaving large cache files laying around)

Chuckit · Jul 21, 2006, 12:27 PM

WhatSize is much less reliable than Omni Disk Sweeper. It frequently reports large folders (such as my music folder) as being completely empty.

Chuckit · Jul 21, 2006, 12:28 PM

Originally Posted by Dillon-K

why make a backup? will it delete this stuff off his G5? or is that just one of those "had to say so" kind of things?

Just in case, I'm guessing. Migration Assistant doesn't do anything to the source computer.

G0Ducks · Jul 21, 2006, 12:44 PM

Anyway, I have everything transfered. I did it all manually

Call me a sicko, but I used 5 DVDs, a meticulous eye, and a few gray hairs to get it all.

Actually, it wasn't that hard at all! I was really surprised. I have all my passwords, bookmarks, emails, email attachment... Basically, everything that is important, I have.

Thanks for all the input.

R

CharlesS · Jul 21, 2006, 02:21 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

WhatSize is much less reliable than Omni Disk Sweeper. It frequently reports large folders (such as my music folder) as being completely empty.

Heh, if that's true, it's probably using 32-bit ints instead of 64-bit ints to store the sizes. Is the cutoff about 4 GB (or 2 GB if he's using signed values)?

If so, write the author. That can be easily fixed.

24klogos · Jul 21, 2006, 09:50 PM

Originally Posted by Cadaver

All FireWire cables are male to male (or at least all 6-pin FireWire 400 cables are).

He probably has a miniDV to firewire only.

gregarios · Jul 23, 2006, 11:58 AM

Originally Posted by 24klogos

He probably has a miniDV to firewire only.

Actually I think he has a peripheral USB cable.

kahuna · Jul 23, 2006, 05:06 PM

regardless of whether or not migration is needed. a backup strategy is of the utmost importance for EVERY computer user. every harddrive will fail someday. if tomorrow is you day noone can say. but we all will suffer the same fate without a recent backup. loss of data/music/movies/pictures/documents/whatever

surferboy · Jul 28, 2006, 11:40 AM

I need to jump into this discussion. In the near future, I will be buying a MBP. I'd like to migrate my stuff from my 17' Powerbook over. So, a few questions: does this migration allow you to migrate applications? I realize that can raise issues, but I'd like to literally clone my current machine, move it over to my new machine, then wipe the hard drive and give my old machine to my wife. It would be much easier to do this than to re-install all my apps- in particular the ones that are downloaded apps.

Also, if I am going to use the migration assistant, can it only be done on the first start-up? If so, do I need to have my two machines connected before I fire up the new one in preparation?

Finally, is there another "smart" way to do it- is there a way to clone my entire hard drive onto an external drive? Would that be useful or not?

Thanks.

msuper69 · Jul 28, 2006, 11:44 AM

You can run the Migration Assistant anytime, even multiple times if you have multiple Macs that you want to move stuff from. Any duplicates are automatically labeled appropriately and you can choose to use or delete them as desired.

You just start up the other Mac in Target Disk Mode prior to running MA.

OreoCookie · Jul 28, 2006, 11:47 AM

Yes, by default applications are copied as well. You can make sure of that by checking the appropriate check box.

Cloning your drive will NOT work! You would copy a PowerPC installation of OS X onto an Intel Mac.

However, I would recommend that you check for updates of your apps.

Chuckit · Jul 28, 2006, 12:38 PM

Yeah, cloning your drive would not work, since Intel Macs can't run the same OS as PPC Macs. But if you set it to transfer everything, Migration Assistant will make the new computer pretty indistinguishable from the old one.

akwarner · Jul 28, 2006, 02:37 PM

Originally Posted by surferboy

I need to jump into this discussion. In the near future, I will be buying a MBP. I'd like to migrate my stuff from my 17' Powerbook over. So, a few questions: does this migration allow you to migrate applications? I realize that can raise issues, but I'd like to literally clone my current machine, move it over to my new machine, then wipe the hard drive and give my old machine to my wife. It would be much easier to do this than to re-install all my apps- in particular the ones that are downloaded apps.

Also, if I am going to use the migration assistant, can it only be done on the first start-up? If so, do I need to have my two machines connected before I fire up the new one in preparation?

Finally, is there another "smart" way to do it- is there a way to clone my entire hard drive onto an external drive? Would that be useful or not?

Thanks.

I just did this two weeks ago and it really is as simple and straightforward as everyone is saying. I was very impressed and pleased with how smoothly and completely it brought everything over. The only thing that needed to be done when it was finished was to re-run the OS updates to bring it up to 10.4.7. My assumption was that the updates on the previous G4 iBook I was upgrading from were the PPC ones and the new MBP of course needed the Intel ones. Once the updates were pulled down from online and installed, the machine was virtually indistinguishable from the previous one. Well software and data - wise, it was of course faster and the screen was bigger

. I'm an old Windows user and this is by far the better way to move from one machine to another. there was no re-installing of applications, no forgetting to copy bookmarks or favorites, no resetting up of passwords or keys, no missing browser history, no icons missing from where I was accustomed to seeing them, etc. It is a great, well thought out process. As for backing up, while you should be doing regular backups regardless, this process simply copies information from your previous machine so there should not be anyway for it to damage the original copies of the information.

Enjoy your new MBP.

A.

Brass · Jul 29, 2006, 12:46 AM

Originally Posted by akwarner

I just did this two weeks ago and it really is as simple and straightforward as everyone is saying. I was very impressed and pleased with how smoothly and completely it brought everything over. The only thing that needed to be done when it was finished was to re-run the OS updates to bring it up to 10.4.7. My assumption was that the updates on the previous G4 iBook I was upgrading from were the PPC ones and the new MBP of course needed the Intel ones. Once the updates were pulled down from online and installed, the machine was virtually indistinguishable from the previous one. Well software and data - wise, it was of course faster and the screen was bigger

. I'm an old Windows user and this is by far the better way to move from one machine to another. there was no re-installing of applications, no forgetting to copy bookmarks or favorites, no resetting up of passwords or keys, no missing browser history, no icons missing from where I was accustomed to seeing them, etc. It is a great, well thought out process. As for backing up, while you should be doing regular backups regardless, this process simply copies information from your previous machine so there should not be anyway for it to damage the original copies of the information.

Enjoy your new MBP.

A.

I went through the same process a few weeks ago, and my conclusion is that it works so well that it takes all the fun out of having a new computer!

It's just like having the same old computer I always had but in a different case, and running a bit faster.

As for backups, I agree. I'm not sure why anyone would want to do a backup just before doing this (at least any more than doing a backup any other time). This process is essentially making a backup of user data anyhow (the live data becomes the backup on the old machine, while the copy on the new machine becomes the live data).

surferboy · Jul 29, 2006, 09:07 AM

Brass, I sort of thought about what you are saying. That experience of a clean slate is sort of fun...

Dumb question: how does all this work with software licenses, etc.? If an app is meant for one machine, but you migrate it to another- will the app not work?

Thanks for the input. Apple really is solid. Now, I just have to wait it out for those Meroms- hope it's not another month like some suggest!

OreoCookie · Jul 29, 2006, 10:21 AM

Well, even if Apple upgrades its machines with Meroms, I've waited something like six weeks for my MacBook Pro …�and the university received the first batch our retailer got!

Most software works, e. g. TextMate or all of OmniGroup's software did recognize the licenses properly.

Chuckit · Jul 29, 2006, 12:48 PM

Originally Posted by surferboy

Dumb question: how does all this work with software licenses, etc.? If an app is meant for one machine, but you migrate it to another- will the app not work?

Most license schemes are not keyed to certain hardware, so they can be tranferred with Migration Assistant. Apps that require activation, like Quark, will say the hardware has been tampered with and need to be reactivated.