Consolidate Drives?

[silverwood]

Just purchased a new iMac and plan to move away from my current Mac Pro Tower set up (my use of the mac has changed significantly since my children arrived on the scene five years ago and I no longer need the processing power or flexibility).

My current set up utilises several disks, but of primary relevance is the fact my OS and applications sit on a smaller (and faster) boot drive and my data is on a second.

Obviously the iMac has a single disk and so my questions are:

1. Will Migration Assistant be able to recognise and move data from separate hard drives within the same Mac, or will I need to consolidate onto a single disk before I start?
2. If the latter, is this as simple as creating a new admin account, copying the data over (the boot drive is too small to be the target drive), changing the home folder location and boot up drive setting and restarting?

Appreciate any help

 

[silverwood]

Consolidate Drives

Anyone? Would really appreciate any advice

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Not a full answer, but if you were to restore from a Time Machine backup certainly this wouldn't matter.

In your position I'd also be inclined to reinstall apps again so as not to carry too much junk over, and then just copy the data files across either via MA or manually.

 

[silverwood]

Thanks for your reply. One additional ingredient in the mix is that I am still running 10.5.8 on my current platform, so my Time Machine and SuperDuper backups will not be of use unless I take the time to upgrade first.

I do want the cleanest install possible, so as you suggest, a selective data transfer is the best approach, so I only really need MA for the keychain, bookmarks, Address Book etc. I will have to do some research to better understand its capabilities.

Last resort (and least desirable from a time perspective) is a completely manual exercise.