Going from one Mac to another - how?

[dougb256]

We are going to return our new 27" C2D and use our old 24" C2D, which I have already wiped clean. I would rather load all of the apps and data back w/o using Time Machine, as it caused a few problems when we moved from the 24" to the 27".

Is there a basic set of outlined procedures for doing this, especially with Mail? I have a lot of archived emails in various mailboxes in my Mail app and I don't want to lose them.

Thanks,
Doug

 

[MacHamster68]

just use apple talk and allow sharing and drag and drop things over from the 27 to the 24

 

[powerbook911]

You can also just connect firewire cable between the two machines, and it will put the 24-incher back the way everything was on the 27, this is like the migration assistant right when you launch the computer the first time.

 

[mscriv]

Like mentioned above you can use a firewire cable and Target Disk Mode to make the 24" iMac's drive appear as an external for the 27". Then just clone the drive and you will have your exact computer without having to use Time Machine. I've done this before when moving from a 20" iMac to a 24" one. I used Carbon Copy Cloner. It's free and easy.

 

[dougb256]

I don't want to clone the drive tho... one of my old apps (Arturia's Analog Factory) got hosed during the last migration via Time Machine and it refuses to 'clean up', so I want to do a fresh install of that app.

This iMac is used in our recording studio, so it doesn't have a ton of apps and it would probably be better to install most of those apps in the usual method anyway. I'm mainly concerned about Mail and iPhoto, because of the archived messages and pictures.

 

[dougb256]

....and of course iTunes as well!