Transferring Data to My New iMac

[rumbletum]

I’m about to take delivery of a new intel imac within the next couple of days (bloody TNT – 2 days to get x000’s of miles from Shanghai ->Amsterdam-> Cannock, then 5 days to get the 15 miles from Cannock to my home) and just have a few queries about transferring data from my existing setup (imac G5 rev.a).

As far as I am aware I have these options for transferring the data –

1) Buy a firewire cable and use the migration assistant
2) Use my external hard drive (which has my internal hard drive backed up to it in its entirety every night) to transfer the data across
3) Use my .mac account to sync various settings and do a manual transfer of any other items.

Initially using the migration assistant seems the best/easiest solution, but I was thinking that this would be the ideal opportunity to start from scratch and clear some of the crud off my system. The main things I want to transfer are all my emails, pictures, music, bookmarks etc. I would be prepared to manually re-install any software I required. This would also be useful as I know I have certain apps (Virtual PC etc) that definitely won’t run under Rosetta, and others I don’t need anymore.

I’m just after opinions really on how other people transfer to a new system, and how flexible the migration assistant is, ie does it just copy everything across or do you select what you want to transfer.

Thanks

Matt

 

[mfacey]

I'm not sure whether Firewire transfer when you're setting up your imac will allow you to specify which files/folders you do and don't want.

I think you best bet would be just to do the basic install of OSX without the Firewire mode. Then just transfer the files you want afterwards from your external drive. This saves you from possibly getting files you don't want and will allow you to install everything you want and nothing more.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

The Firewire transfer will be easiest.

Although the 2nd harddrive might be faster.
I noticed when I did the Firewire transfer from my B/W Mac to my iBook that it took a while (of course it was 25gb of data).

You definitely have control of exactly what you transfer over, the harddrive of the target computer appears as a drive on the new computer and you can navigate it just as you would any other drive.

 

[rumbletum]

Thanks for the input.

A lot of the data I want to transfer is for Apple programs (iTunes, iPhoto, Mail etc) and although I imagine transferring the pictures, music etc across will be straightforward, is it as easy to copy across playlists, ratings, last played, photo/email folders etc?

 

[rumbletum]

Well, my mac arrived yesterday (3 days earlier than promised) and I've now finished transferring everything across.

In the end I did it manually, first transferred bookmarks, settings etc via .mac. Then I manually installed the programs I required, and then finally copied the documents across from my hard drive, and it all went very well.

Thanks for the help