help transferring files

Depends on your machine. Older machines only have USB, new ones firewire, and lightning connection. I'd say plug the device into an external source and transfer by cable.

There's an Apple utility called Migration Assistant; should be in your Utilties folder. You could try that. I think it's a current product. I'm on Mountain Lion now but working off a drive that I recently upgraded from Lion and the utility was already there and stayed put.

Hook up your current main machine to the old machine/drive and launch Migration Assistant.

You should be good to go. Let me know if this works for you!

ALL MBPs have firewire ports or capability, which will be two times as fast as USB. To use firewire, you will need a firewire cable.

You can employ Migration assistant, Setup assistant or use Target disk mode.

Here is information on your options:

http://pondini.org/OSX/Setup.html

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4413

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1554

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10725

Ciao.

Mua Lahi,

I wouldn't use migration assistant. I recently had to move all of my files from a 2008 macbook to a 2013 macbook air. It took me three days to try multiple attempts with migration assistant. What I did was create a drop box account with my macbook (my macbook air already had drop box installed) and then move files from my macbook into my drop box folder. Once that was completed, I would manually copy my files onto my macbook air. The catch is that you need to be sure your computer sharing is enabled and that you make sure your older macintosh will allow permission to your new macintosh to see its drop box files. Hope that helps!

-Freecalls4j-

For simple solutions see http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11466