Migrate from iMac G5 w/Leopard to iMac (Intel) w/Tiger

Thanks, I'll give that a try today. I just wasn't sure it was going to allow me to migrate from a higher (on the PowerPC) to a lower OS version (on the 2007 Intel) first. We'll see how it goes.

Well, I have the iMac G5 (that I am trying to get data from) in Target mode.

The 2007 iMac now tells me "There are no versons of Mac OS X available on your old Mac. You can only transfer info from a Mac that has OS X installed. Click continue to keep trying, or click cancel to stop the transferring."

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Well, Lion is not on either machine at the moment, if that matters. The G5 is Leopard and the Intel is Tiger (I've got the upgrade dvd for Leopard).

The G5 has the floating FW symbol on the screen.

They are connected with a FW 400/800 cable. The cable works as I used it to do a back up to SuperDuper! last night.

On the new Intel, it did not take me to the Time Machine option as that isn't part of Tiger 10.4. That was my main concern, how could I could install the upgrade to Leopard DVD without making a user account. I thought once I made a user account I would not be able to migrate correctly from the G5 or a Time Machine backup.

It only got me about 4 steps in...pick the language, options to transfer from another computer (from another partition or do nothing), attach FW and restart in target mode, and then the screen where it tells you it's looking for the target drive it may take 30 seconds or more. That's where the message came into play.

I'm wondering if I just set the new Intel up with her same user name/home folder, upgrade with the dvd to Leopard and then somehow try to do an erase and install with the Time Machine backup or the SuperSuper backup.

She's in high school and doesn't have a lot on the current machine, maybe 90 GB used. I think I can easily move folders she's made for school papers and stuff. We share iTunes on my mac, so hers is not sync'd to, so nothing lost there. The biggest thing would be bookmarks and the iPhoto library (approx 2K pics).

I got it going. I did the Leopard upgrade on the 2007 iMac. It wouldn't let me keep her same name when I started to use the Time Machine backup to migrate. So I made a test user account (and deleted the one I had made matching her current iMac) and then decided to just attach the firewire and use Migration Assistant. When I verified it was all up and running, I deleted the test user account.

Everything works fine. Now upgrading back to Snow Leopard and then Lion, like it was before I handed it over to her!

Thanks for the help.