Comments on: Tips for Migrating Between Macs

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:17:39 +0000

Years of experience I guess.

Generally you should know where any of your *nix tools are and move those. Then you’ve also got your preference and config files in your Users/username/Library to move as well.

By: Oliver L.

Oliver L. — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:42:39 +0000

How do you know exactly which files to copy over if you’re doing it manually?

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 18:58:55 +0000

Interesting, seemed to work fine for me.

By: Kreig Zimmerman

Kreig Zimmerman — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 17:38:22 +0000

One caveat when using Migration Assistant that I discovered… it will not copy over items from an old account to a new account if the account’s name is exactly the same.

When I changed over from my old G5 to my MacBook Pro last winter, I discovered this quirk. In retrospect it was probably better that way. I simply migrated the thngs to a second account on the new laptop and then gradually moved items over as I needed them.

Personally, manual copying seems best. Like so many of these tools, they’re really geared at less advanced users and probably best ignored by the more geek-skilled…

By: PatrickQG

PatrickQG — Fri, 25 May 2007 07:35:54 +0000

I went for the migration assistant - which failed miserably on my Aperture library (that puppy is big), so I ended up not bringing my own user account over and just copying my home folder manually - but it did the hard work (copying apps over, and bringing most of the licenses with them), even brought across my changes to sudoers.

I, consequently, haven’t really dealt with a fresh install of OS X in two years… made setting up a naked machine at work for a colleague feel very strange.

The only thing I found that caused the odd bit of oddness was Virtual PC - it had kernel extensions (that were ignored, I think), and some kind of file system/disk driver bundle for the disk images it creates. Until I cleared that off I had small system oddness.

By: Jijesh

Jijesh — Fri, 25 May 2007 03:34:13 +0000

I just got a new HD for my ibook…I had backed up my disk to Amazon S3.

By: Shawn Blanc

Shawn Blanc — Fri, 25 May 2007 03:13:50 +0000

I just ordered a Mac Pro and am switching from my PowerBook and was considering how I wanted to migrate.

Manual transfer and a clean install of all my apps will be time consuming but the best choice too, I think.