Moving iMacs

ding76uk

ding76uk

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Carl
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I am current running a 20 inch iMac. I am planning on upgrading in the next month or so. What is the best way of taking everything from my current mac to my new one? Will a time machine backup run into the new machine do the job on this or is there a better way?

Also is it foolproof? Ideally I want my new mac before I sell the current one, but obviously the money from the sale would come in handy and I may need sell it to finance the new one!

Cheers in advance for your help!
 
If it's a brand new computer, when you go through the setup screens, Migration Assistant will offer to copy your data from the old iMac - users, applications and network and sharing setup.

Instructions are on screen: Depending on whether the new one has FireWire, you'll be able to do it with a FireWire cable and the old one started up in Target Disk Mode (hold down 'T' on the keyboard at startup) or over a network connection (if the old computer is running 10.5 or later).

You can do the same later by opening Migration Assistant in /Applications/Utilities.
 
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Time machine back up should do, when you start it up or put it the install discs in you can choose to reinstall from a back up (time machine) and that will sort everything out, even most of your preferences.
 
Another vote for Time Machine route - I used to use the Firewire and Target Disk Mode, but somewhere along the line I didn't have an 800 to 400 Firewire adaptor so the last three upgrades I've done using Time Machine and it's worked fine.
 
You have the choice of using Migration assistant or restoring from a Time Machine backup.
I would make sure you have an up to date time machine backup before you start.
I've used migration assistant over firewire for my last couple of Mac's and it works great.
 
When I upgraded my IMac last year I was amazed how easy it was using Migration Assistant, moved all my Adobe Software etc without major re-installs etc
 
eos1 said:
I've used migration assistant over firewire for my last couple of Mac's and it works great.
Click to expand...

I've lost count of the number of times I've used it since it appeared (in 10.3?).

I run about thirty Macs for my company and we're always moving people and their computers around. A major boon - especially compared with the old 'Classic' Mac OS (or any other OS, for that matter).

I've not had recourse to a full Time Machine restore yet, but if it works as well, it should be a doddle.
 
Swapped my macbook hard drive last week and used timemachine to restore (same as you would with a new macbook/imac)

Have to say I was pretty impressed. My macbook was identical to before the hard drive swap other than randomly I had to reset my wallpaper again.

Another vote for timemachine
 
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