My mom's PC died and I want to give her my 2010 al iMac. I need to transfer my files from the iMac to my new 13" Retina MBP. What is the best way to do this?
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best way to transfer files
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You should be able to use migration assistant if you want to move everything over. If you just have certain files you want to move over I believe you can use this too. It is best to connect with a thunderbolt cable (will be super fast) but you can do it with usb and wifi too if needed.
Yeah wireless says it will take 26 hours so that's not an option. I guess I need to buy a TB cable and an adapter? Is there a FW to TB adapter? Or USB to TB? Maybe I'll just purchase an external HD and then use it for backups.
Migration Assistant like the previous poster said, or you can back up everything on to a Time Machine disk and then restore from that back up to your new machine.
Yea it took me about 4-5 hours to transfer from my macbook pro to my new macbook air but its not like I had to be there I just ran it over night so time was not an issue.
If you just have certain files you want to transfer over and not a whole copy of all the contents of the computers and settings there should be an option for that.
Options such as usb3 ethernet firewire and thunderbolt are faster than wifi transfers in most cases.
The 13" Retina doesn't have an ethernet port. I just purchased an adapter for TB to ethernet. I'll see how that goes.
Agree. The guy at Apple said don't spend the money for a TB cable if you're only using it for a one time transfer of files to a new iMac. And he said the TB was not any faster. Use Ethernet cable.
Wow. I didn't know Apple was dropping ethernet. I guess we can expect it to go in future desktops.
