Downsize from Imac to macbook air

[besweet1]

I have a very old Imac and recently got a macbook air. Of course the Imac drive is larger than the macbook air. I really don't want to transfer everything by music, pictures, documents and some applications. I don't think all of my music and pics will fit on my macbook air. My guestion is what are my options to transfer and what do I do if my macbook can't hold all of my music? Can I put it on a usb drive and access it through photos or itunes? Still learning. Thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

I don't really understand the need to have all of one's stuff on both Macs.

MacConfucious say:
"Let each Mac, be its own Mac."

Let the iMac continue to do the things it does best as a desktop.

Set up your MacBook Air to do what "an air" does best -- be a slimmed-down travel computer.

 

[besweet1]

It's because my iMac isn't going to last much longer. It is over 10 years old.

 

[jlseattle]

SO I dealt with this. Get an external drive and back-up everything. But also get a icloud and/or service (99cents a month) to give you space for photos and documents. I also have an onedrive where I put most of my documents. You can setup photos to only fill space open space on mac.

BUT seriously you are going to be going to the cloud. And the cloud works perfectly.

 

[besweet1]

Thank you. So would I use migration assistant or something? How do I find the files where my music and pictures are? Someone told me it was a hidden file.

 

[Fishrrman]

What you need to move, depends on WHERE you keep things.

If you keep everything in your home folder, you could just copy the home folder to an external drive of some sort (hard drive, USB flash drive, etc.).

If you keep things "spread out", you'd have to copy them to the backup drive "by hand".

Or... get an older copy of CarbonCopyCloner (I think the version you'll need is 3.4.7), put it on the iMac, and use it to create a "clone" of the iMac's drive to a backup drive. The backup will be mountable on other Macs, and you can get the things you need from it.

Important:
You may run into "permissions problems" when moving things from one Mac (with one account) to another Mac (with another account, even if the name is the same).
To get around this, you mount the icon of the drive on the desktop, then bring up the get info box (command i) and down at the bottom unlock the lock icon with your password and put a check into the box "ignore ownership on this volume". That will fix it.