Buying iMac: best way to tranfer info?

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Level 1

36 points

Buying iMac: best way to tranfer info?

I have a G4, which still works great, but the graphics is too slow. iPhoto and iTunes data are on a external HD, Timemachine is sent to another HD.

Will it cause a problem to just plug in the 2 HD to the new iMac? I would use one external HD for the TimeMachine backup via firewire. I would then transfer all the iTunes and iPhoto to the internal. Maybe I might use the 2nd external HD for a 3rd copy of my iPhotos. I wish the iMac had 2 Firewires like my old iMac (even though they are only 400's).

iMac 1 GHz PowerPC G4, 1 GB ram,, Mac OS X (10.5.8), iPad64, iPad64 3G, iPhone 3G, iPhone, iPod touch x 2, iPod nano, iPod shuffle

Posted on Aug 17, 2010 8:53 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Jolly Giant

Level 7

25,464 points

Aug 17, 2010 9:07 AM in response to Debby

Buying iMac: best way to transfer info?

you might want to take a look @ this user guide before you start: _*A Basic Guide for Migrating to Intel-Macs*_.

another excellent read here: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/19.html.

Will it cause a problem to just plug in the 2 HD to the new iMac?

no.

I would use one external HD for the TimeMachine backup via firewire

this could be useful: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/B5.html.

good luck !

J GG

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Answer 2

Rick Lang

Level 4

1,236 points

Aug 18, 2010 8:46 AM in response to Debby

Debby, your current external disks will be formatted as Apple Partition Map, APM. You can certainly read those disks from your new Intel-based iMac. Once you copy all you data to the new iMac and have finished using the Time Machine backups from the G4, you may want to completely reformat the external hard disks as GUID Partition Table, GPT with Mac OS Extended Journaled volumes (HFS+).
On the new system, the Time Machine drive will still work well after your initial complete Time Machine backup, if you use a USB connection (assuming your enclosure also supports USB). Or you can daisy-chain the two Firewire drives.

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Answer 3

Jolly Giant

Level 7

25,464 points

Aug 18, 2010 9:15 AM in response to Rick Lang

Rick Lang wrote:
you may want to completely reformat the external hard disks as GUID Partition Table, GPT with Mac OS Extended Journaled volumes (HFS+).

unless any of the drives will be used to boot an intel Mac, APM will do just fine.

why the hassle to move content to a temporary location, reformat, the move the content back ?

J GG

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Answer 4

Rick Lang

Level 4

1,236 points

Aug 18, 2010 4:00 PM in response to Jolly Giant

JGG, it would give her the flexibility to make the drive bootable if desired. My external drives are bootable with a modest partition so I can try the upgrade to Mac OS X 10.7. I did it originally to test 10.6.x upgrades but none have been significant in terms of the things updated that I have not yet done so. Perhaps the system one day will use the disk for installing Windows. Just seems to me to be a good idea moving to a new Intel-based machine from a PowerPC platform but not a necessity. Thanks for the input.

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Answer 5

Aug 19, 2010 8:06 PM in response to Debby

I had my old iMac backed up with Time Machine and when I got the new one, it asked if I had a Time Machine backup on initial start up. I chose this option and everything came over with no problems whatsoever...account info, settings (incl. wallpaper and the location of my program windows). It took about an hour and 15 mins to transfer 100GB, so not bad at all. Even my Mozy online backup didn't see to notice that I was running a new machine.

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Answer 6

Debby Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 3, 2010 6:59 AM in response to Debby

I transfered my data from old iMac to new when the new iMac booted up and ran me through the migration process.

However, the new iMac did not detect the 2 external hd connected to the old iMac. I had to rerun the migration program to move over the itunes and iphoto data. This ended up causing duplicates of most of the photos. It was a pain to remove the duplicates. Lol....I am still trying to find all the duplicates.

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