Help with Migration...PLEASE!!!

[JohnnyQuid]

Hello all,
This is my first time posting on the forums here, however I've gotten through many a problem in the past with all your help. I haven't really been able to find anything that addresses my specific issue, I'm hoping someone can help me/point me in the right direction. Here is my situation:

I got a new iMac after my first one died on me (R.I.P.) the hard drive from the first one is still good and I'm using it via an external enclosure. The new iMac came and I needed to start using it ASAP (school/work) before being able to migrate using the old HD (had to wait on the enclosure to get here.) Now that I'm able to do so (migrate) I'm having a lot of trouble.

Is it because I started a new user account? Do I need to wipe the new HD and start from scratch? Migration assistant gave me the option to replace existing user which I chose, however that did not seem to work.

I've done it a couple times and tried a couple different ways and the only thing I've been able to do is have the option of booting up using either user.

What do I need to do to get everything I need from my old HD? The biggest problem I'm having is getting my new iTunes to find my iPhone backup (contacts, notes etc.) from my old computer/HD along with the whole 2 user thing?
Any help would be very much appreciated.

P.S. I'm not computer savvy at all lol

 

[JohnnyQuid]

My old comp was a 20" iMac 1.8 ghz g5 new comp is a 27" iMac 2.93 ghz i7 in case that helps at all. And yes, I know that's way more computer than a dummy like me needs but I couldn't resist and I didn't want to upgrade anytime soon!

 

[S.B.G]

Do you have a Time Machine backup drive from your old machine to use? That would be the best way to restore everything. Otherwise it sounds like it may be a drag and drop operation form the old HDD to the new iMac.

I think you cannot use Migration Assistant successfully with the setup you describe, being new iMac and old HDD in an enclosure. To my knowledge, Migration Assistant needs to have both the new iMac and the old iMac connected together with OS/X running to move all your stuff over.

 

[JohnnyQuid]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I don't have a time machine backup that I'm aware of (not very prudent). However, when I boot up using the old user it boots up as if I was on my old iMac (looks like 10.5.8?) do I just need to run a software update from there to solve the problem? Or is that the best I'm going to get and I should just delete that old user and do the drag and drop as you've suggested?

 

[JohnnyQuid]

So I figured it out...In the interest of helping someone else that might have this problem one day; I did an erase and install then during the initial setup migrated from the old HD (via external enclosure) and viola!!!