I am wondering about transferring my pc date to my new iMac. I know there is a migration assistant, but I have multiple drives in my pc. Will the migration assistant be able to handle this?

hi there

Congratulations for your new iMac 🙂

See this article from Apple for details on how migrate data from a Microsft Windows PC to a Mac. For Windows related transfer there is an additional article here.

As far as I understand said article, migrating data from multiple drives on the source Windows PC is supported. Just transfer everything you want to transfer from drive C: then restart the Migration Assistant and select From Time Machine or other disk from the source selector. In theory it should list the available drives, so you can choose. It might be that you need to run Migration Assistant for each of your other drives one at a time.

As far as I know the PC version of the Migration Assistant is like the Mac version in that it only lets you transfer from the boot drive. If you have multiple boot drives you can boot up with each one and transfer a new account. It is important to understand that Migration Assistant copies accounts and that data in the account. But if you are using one drive to hold music, another for movies, etc you'll need to manually copy that data after you've migrated account(s).

Yes, you can set up filesharing and copy files manually. Mail is a different story and I'm not sure how Migration Assistant deals with Outlook mail. For me it was a non-issue since I had no emails I wanted to keep back when I switched. Today most (but clearly not all) email servers use IMAP so the mail remains on the server instead of being transferred to the computer (unless you move it there manually).

<<if I'm understanding correctly, the migration assistant will only move the stuff over from my primary (ssd), which has very little on it.>>

According to this article (see quote below) Migration Assistant can transfer from your second hard disk drive as well

Quote

• Files from each top-level folder in the logged-in user's home directory will be offered.
• Non-system files (items in \Windows, \Program Files), top-level folders on the user's Windows system disk, and top-level folders on other local disks attached to the Windows PC are also offered.
• Tip: You can uncheck (deselect) anything you do not want to transfer.

End Quote

Using a network connection for transfer will give you more control on what goes where. Downside is, setting up such connection can be a little tricky at times. See the section "Manually migrating - Use a network connection" within this support documentfrom Apple for a starting point.

You spoke of using Entourage for Emails on your Mac. Starting with the current version of Microsoft Office for Mac, Entourage is replaced with Outlook for Mac, so it seems not advisable to transfer to a program that will see end of service rather soon.

Basically, yes.

There are few requirements to meet though:

• both PC and Mac must bei in the same network.
• make sure both PC and Mac are in the same workgroup (default value is WORKGROUP in most versions of Windows as well as in OSX) which should work fine as long as it is identical on both computers.
• both PC and Mac must have File Sharing enabled.
• It helps to have the same combination of username and password on both PC and Mac (not absolutely necessary, but makes things easier).

Let's do this step by step:

First of all, please answer the following two questions:

1. Which version of Windows runs on your PC?

2. Is your Mac running OSX 10.9.2? If not, which version is running instead?

the following set of instructions is a little longer, so you might want to print it out and have it handy 😉

Step 1 - PC

If your PC already is connected to the Internet, hold down the Windows button on

your keyboard and simultanously press R. Into the opening window enter "cmd" (without

the quotation marks). A command line will open, enter "ipconfig" (again without the

quotation marks) at the prompt. Now find the section labelled "Ethernet-Adaptor" and

note the values for IP-Address, Subnet-Mask and Default-Gateway on a sheet of paper

If your PC is not already connected to the internet, you need to manually configure its IP address.

• open Network and Sharing Center
• do a right click on Ethernet and select Properties
• in middle of the screen there is a box labelled "This connection uses the following items"
• out of this box select "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)"
• click on the Properties button in the right corner
• Into the window "Use the following IP address" enter the following values
  • IP-Address: 192.168.0.1
  • Subnet-Mask: 255.255.255.0
  • Default-Gateway is the IP-Address of your Router. This value is needed for internet connection, for the file sharing setup only this value can be left empty.

Step 2 - Mac

If your Mac already is connected to the internet, it is likely that it has automatically receive the necessary parameters from your router and therefore should be in the same network as your PC. To be on the safe side, you can check this by

• open System Preferences
• select Network
• choose Ethernet from the panel on the left side of the window
• click on Advanced
• click on TCP/IP
• compare the values for IP-Address, Subnet-Mask and Default-Gateway with those you wrote down earlier.
• If both PC and Mac have identical numbers in the first three parts of the IP-Address, you are set.

If your Mac is not already connected to the internet, you need to manually configure its IP-Address as well.

• In the TCP/IP window you have just opened select "Manually" from the drop down menu "Configure IPv4:"
• Enter the following values
  • IP-Address: 192.168.0.2
  • Subnet-Mask: same as with PC
  • Default-Gateway: same as with PC

Step 3 - Activate File Sharing on PC

• open Control Panel
• select Network and Internet
• select Network and Sharing Center
• on the left panel select change advanced sharing settings
• in the middle of the new page enable turn on file and printer sharing

Step 4 - Activate File Sharing on Mac

• open System Preferences
• select Sharing
• set check mark next to File Sharing (green circle appears on the right side next to File Sharing:)
• click on Options:
• set check mark next to Share files and folders using SMB
• in the listbox under the text Windows File Sharing make sure there is a check mark next to your account name

Step 5 - Create a share on your PC

• In Explorer select the folder you wish to share
• do a right click on that folder and select "Share with"
• choose "Specific people"
• a new window opens. there select your Windows username (usually the first in the list)
• if you plan to copy from Windows to Mac only, it would be sufficient to grant Read permission only, but, since most likely you are the only person to access that share and certainly do not plan to sabotage yourself, Read & Write permission is ok too.
• finally click on "Share"

Step 6 - Create a share on your Mac

Once the check mark next to your account name is set (see above) your home directory is automatically set as a share.

Step 7 - Connect your PC to your Mac-Share

• do a right click on the network icon which resides on your desktop or in the left
• panel of every Explorer window
• Select Connect Share
• in the text box next to Folder: enter \\<ip-address-of-your-mac>\<your-osx-username>
• if you are using the same username and password on both Windows and OSX click on "Finish",
• if not set the check mark next to "Connect using different credentials" afterwards click on "Finish" A new window will open where you enter username and password that you are using with OSX

Step 8 - Connect your Mac to your PC-Share

• hold down the command key and press K simultanously or in Finder click on Go in the menu at the top of your screen and select "Connect to Server"
• in the Window that opens enter smb://<your-windows-username>:<your-windows-password>@<ip-address-of-your-PC/<y our-windows-username>
• or
• smb://<ip-adress-of-your-PC/<your-windows-username> you will be asked to enter your Windows username and password in popup window

Now you have both computers connected to each other. Each will provide you access to your home directory of the other computer. Open a second Explorer or Finder window with your local home directory and start copying 🙂

you are welcome