Putting old MAC OS content onto a new Imac

[mattg3]

Still using a 2009 Imac and i never upgraded my mac OS or my Itunes account since it has always worked fine.I want to buy a new Imac soon and have used time machine to copy entire hard drive to external one.
I dont want to loose my Itunes account(600 of my own cds copied to the Imac) or my favorites and other things.What will happen if I copy my old Imac contents to my new Imac from my external hard drive since its old Itunes and mac OS
Will it cause conflict or will my old content go right into whatever mac OS my new Imac has?My biggest fear is messing up my huge cd collection and main reason why I never updated Itunes.I have combined a lot of discs and changed photo images on the cds and I want it copied exactly. Thanks

 

[Floris]

iOS is the mobile os for the iPad, iPhone etc.
OSX (now macOS) is the desktop os for Macbooks, iMacs, etc.

If you have a full time machine backup, you can use that on the new mac to get data back from it.
You can always manually move your files from directories to an external drive, so you know you have a working backup you can just handpick from. In iTunes you can right click on a song and say 'show this in finder' to find the 'real' directory where the source of that iTunes listed music is.

Whatever is on your iPhone or other iOS device you wish to backup, back it up in iTunes of course in case you have to restore. But the data itself, you can try to export it to say dropbox or google drive, or just an external drive.

There are loads of threads on this forum that explain how to export certain data out of iOS to a Mac.

 

[mattg3]

Sorry I confused you since I was calling my old Mac OS content by wrong IOS name.My question is about putting entire old Mac OS content onto a new Imac.

 

[maflynn]

Sorry I confused you since I was calling my old Mac OS content by wrong IOS name.My question is about putting entire old Mac OS content onto a new Imac.

Nope, I rarely say something is impossible but you cannot put any version of OS X that predates what was delivered.
The older versions do not have the device drivers to handle the GPU, CPU, and other components.

 

[DeltaMac]

Right, you can't do a full restore to a new Mac, but you CAN import (migrate) from the Time Machine backup.

You have a Time Machine backup.
You may want to assure that everything is backed up again to a different app, such as Carbon Copy Cloner, or another, such as Super Duper.
With either of those third-party choices, backup your drive to an external, and not the same drive that you use for Time Machine. You can use those for safety backups in case something goes wrong with your first import.

When you get your new Mac, and first turn it on, it will ask if you want to migrate your files and apps from another drive. And, it will tell you how to do that from a Time Machine backup.
Apple tries to make that simple, and painless. You do have to be patient, and let the migration of all your stuff finish.
The first time you try iTunes, you will see what you have (or what you don't have).
And, you will still have your alternate full backup in the event that you still need to recover your files.
I expect that you will not need to do that, and that everything will be fine, after the initial Time Machine migration.
Enjoy your new Mac!

 

[HallStevenson]

The songs in iTunes are just 'data' files, no different than a document or picture. Simply import them into iTunes on the new machine.

By "favorites", do you mean links to websites ?

What are the "other things" ?

 

[mattg3]

Yes,links to websites.When you say import them into itunes do you connect old Imac to new to do this or do you import from external hard drive that time machine copied.If you copy whole hard drive over to external HD,how do you find just Itunes to transfer over?

 

[DeltaMac]

You can use your Migration Assistant for what you need.
It's one of the first steps after you turn on your new Mac the first time.

 

[hanser]

I would just connect the 2 iMacs and Tell the new one during Installation to copy everything when it asks you. I just did it with mine, no hassle.

 

[Fishrrman]

Instead of using Time Machine, I would use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone the contents of the old iMac to an external drive. You can download both CCC and SD FREE, and use them to create your cloned backup.

Now, you can STILL USE Migration Assistant with the new Mac, if you wish (and from reports I've read, MA runs MUCH faster working from a cloned copy than it does from TM).

OR -- just mount the cloned drive on the desktop and use the finder to copy over what you need.

 

[mattg3]

Thanks to all.Migration Assistant sounds like the way to go.