How to Duplicate Mac Book to iMac?

[satyam90]

In office, I am using Mac Book Pro with Mac Tiger installed on it. Now I was provided with iMac. I want new iMac provided to me with the all the contents of my Macbook, what I mean is iMac's harddrive must be a duplicate of my Macbook. Even cofiguring mail, chat's my applications preferences etc. I saw an utility on my Mac "Disk Utility". Can I do it with that. How safe it is. What's the procedure?

 

[karenflower]

It's perfectly safe to use Disk Utility to clone your hard drive. All you need to do is click on the 'Restore' tab, and drag your Macbook's drive name (on the left hand side) into the 'Source' box. Then you can drag your iMac's drive onto 'Destination', select 'Erase Destination' and click Restore.

There are some other programs you can use instead - Carbon Copy Cloner (free) and SuperDuper are highly rated and simple to use.

 

[satyam90]

Then you can drag your iMac's drive onto 'Destination', select 'Erase Destination' and click Restore.

I am not able to see iMac's drive on my Mac Book Pro. How can I make iMac's drive available on my Mac Book so that I can drag it?

 

[bobbleheadbob]

If you have a Time Machine backup of your MBP, you can just set-up your new iMac from the backup and it will recreate everything on there.

 

[mcavjame]

I am not able to see iMac's drive on my Mac Book Pro. How can I make iMac's drive available on my Mac Book so that I can drag it?

Put the iMac in target mode (hold down the t key while booting)
Do the same for the Macbook.
Connect both drives to a third Mac with firewire cables.
Then perform the suggestion for cloning.

Of course, I would not suggest doing this. How about using the Migrate feature?