144. Move Your Data to a New Mac  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 143 Back Up Your Information 118 Add a New User
If you buy yourself a new Mac, after the first few hours of elation at how much faster it is, there's always the inevitable crash of realization: You have to somehow get all your data from your old computer to your new one. Preferably, you want to be able to get all your applications, all your music, all your photos, and all your documents onto the new system so that you don't have to reconstruct anything before you're back up and running. Prior to Mac OS X Tiger, transferring (or migrating ) the data from your old computer to your new one was a lengthy, tedious ordeal involving many steps calling on all the various computing skills you've accumulated to this point, including creating new users, mounting shared drives , synchronizing .Mac settings, and even performing certain operations at the Terminal command line. However, in Tiger, a new utility called Migration Assistant makes this operation a straightforward and streamlined affair. This procedure appears during the setup process of a new Mac when you boot it up for the first time, and you can follow the steps in this task to set up your new computer as part of that process. You can run the Migration Assistant utility at any time, though, copying the data and settings from your old computer's individual user accounts as well as global system settings and installed applications whenever it is most convenient for you. You can even use the Migration Assistant utility to transfer your old data from another volume on the same computer, which comes in handy if you're upgrading your Mac to a larger or newer hard disk.  NOTE Before beginning this task, be sure to have a FireWire cable handy. FireWire cables can be purchased for $10 or so (though some brands can be unnecessarily expensive) at any electronics store. Be sure to get a cable that has a full- size six-pin connector at both ends, as each end will have to plug into a Mac's FireWire port.
| 1. | Launch Migration Assistant
Navigate into the Utilities folder within the Applications folder on your hard disk. Double-click the Migration Assistant icon to begin transferring information from an old Mac to your current one.
An introduction screen appears, outlining the basics of the migration process. After reading the information on this screen, including the note that during the procedure you will be prompted to authenticate as an administrator, click Continue .
| | 2. | Choose the Location to Migrate From The Migration Assistant gives you two options for migrating your data: You can transfer it from another computer, or you can transfer it from another volume on the same computer. If you choose the latter option, for example if you're upgrading your existing Mac to a larger hard disk, steps 3 and 4 are irrelevant and skipped by the Assistant. Click Continue to proceed. 144. Move Your Data to a New Mac  | | 3. | Connect the FireWire Cable You are now prompted to connect your old computer to the new one using the FireWire cable. (The old computer can be either on or offit doesn't matter.) The FireWire port, which is on the back of desktop Macs, on the side of laptops, or additionally on the front of the Power Mac G5, can be recognized with a "Y"-shaped icon where two of the arms are dashed and one is solid, as shown in the drawing on the Migration Assistant screen. Click Continue when both ends of the cable are connected. NOTE The FireWire cable can only be inserted one way; don't force it. If the cable connector doesn't go in easily, turn it around and try it with the flat end pointed the other way. | | 4. | Boot the Old Mac in FireWire Target Disk Mode As directed, boot (or restart) your old computer while holding down the T key on its keyboard. Keep holding down this key until the yellow FireWire logo appears on its screen. The Migration Assistant automatically detects when the old Mac has booted into FireWire Target Disk Mode and a connection is established; the Continue button becomes active at this point. Click it to continue. TIP If you're migrating from a laptop Mac (an iBook or PowerBook), it's a good idea to plug it in using the power supply and AC adapter, as the migration process can take several hoursand you don't want your laptop running out of juice in the middle of the data transfer. | | 5. | Choose the Old System Installation
The next screen contains a list of systems installed on the old Mac. (Usually there is only one.) Click the appropriate one to select it, and then click Continue .
| | 6. | Choose Users to Migrate
In the next screen are listed all the users on the old Mac, along with their pictures and the size of each user's Home folder with all its contents. Information at the bottom of the window tells you how much space is left on your new Mac, and how much additional space will be consumed by the items you choose to transfer from the old computer. Select the check boxes next to each user entry to mark them for migration; deselect users you don't want to migrate. Click Continue .
| | 7. | Choose Applications, Files, and Volumes to Migrate
Next, you are prompted to choose whether to migrate your old Mac's applications and any files and folders in the top level of its hard disk. As with the previous step, each selectable item's size is indicated, and the total is reflected at the bottom of the window.
Carefully consider the implications of what you select here. Applications that don't exist on your new Mac will be copied into its Applications folder; however, if an application from the old Mac also exists on the new one, and the one on the old computer was installed more recently, the version on the new computer will be replaced with the migrated copy.
Click Continue ; the next screen gives you the opportunity to migrate the contents of additional volumes attached to the old Mac, if any. Select the On check box next to any volume you want to migrate. Each volume you select will be copied to a folder of the same name as the volume, at the top level of the new computer's hard disk. Click Continue to move to the final configuration step.
| | 8. | Choose Computer Settings to Migrate
The final screen of options enables you to save yourself the hassle of re-entering the old computer's TCP/IP information or setting up your Sharing configuration the way you had it before. This step is really only useful if you're going through the Migration Assistant as part of the setup of a brand-new Mac; if you're migrating old data to a new computer that you've been using for a while, it's probably a good idea to deselect the options in this screen, or else your working settings will get overwritten by older settings that may not be correct anymore.
| | 9. | Migrate Your Old Data to the New Mac Click Migrate to begin the data transfer process. Depending on the amount of data you have to transfer, this can take an hour or more; FireWire transmits data at 400 megabits per second, so if you noted the amount of space required in the Selected Items readout in previous steps, you can use that to calculate how much time the transfer will take, although the Migration Assistant gives you a running estimate of the time remaining anyway. TIP 1 GB (gigabyte) is equal to 1024 MB (megabytes); one megabyte is equal to 8 megabits. Remember, there's a calculator in Dashboard (press F12 ). You can't interrupt the migration process once it's going, so be sure your laptop's power supply is plugged in and go get yourself a snack and watch some TV. (It's possible to quit the Migration Assistant entirely if you really want to halt the transfer.) When you come back, the Migration Assistant will have reached its final wrap-up screen, and your new Mac will have the users and applications from your old computer, intact and usable with all their settings. Unplug the FireWire cable and shut off (or restart) the old Mac. | TIP Because your old Mac's data is not affected by this process, you might want to keep it untouched and handy for a few days to make sure that all the data was transferred intact. The Migration Assistant makes migration nearly foolproof, but you can never be too careful when it comes to your most treasured data .
 |
