How do I move everything from my old mac to my new one?

[munckee]

I believe I've read somewhere that there's an easy way to move all of my preferences, passwords, favorites, etc from my old mac to my new one. Can someone tell me how?

 

[Applespider]

Get a firewire cable. When your new Mac asks you if you have an old Mac, say yes. Then follow the instructions - it will tell you to link the two with the FW cable and then it will copy over your Users folder and Apps.

If you've already gone through the start up - then look in your Utilities folder in Applications and use the Migration Assistant.

 

[munckee]

If you've already gone through the start up - then look in your Utilities folder in Applications and use the Migration Assistant.

Thanks. Should have specified, my new mac was purchased used. What's a FW cable run?

 

[Quantum Man]

Like $5 on eBay.

 

[munckee]

Can anyone explain to me exactly what will get moved over?

I can't imagine that it will move my programs over, will it? Will it recognize my firefox preferences and move those? Just system preferences?

 

[croshtique]

Migration Assistant can move any user accounts with preferences (i.e. all your Firefox settings and much more), network settings, applications folder
, general files and folders on your main drive and things from other hard disks. You get to choose what you want to transfer over when you do it.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/setup/

 

[stoneage]

I got my new iMac and tried Migration Assistant. I was unable to restart the new iMac. I could log in and shut down. Went to the help line and they tried everything, and the fan started running full blast all the time. I am getting a new iMac today, but I think I will take the time to drag what I want off the old machine using target disk mode. It shouldn't be this complicated.

 

[munckee]

I tried the migration assistant over the weekend and was pretty unhappy with the results. It just seemed messy. Next step is just to reinstall all my software (took about 45 minutes last night) and pull my files from the old to the new computer. Probably via firewire.