Migrating an entire life from PC to Mac... best way?

[Sean Dempsey]

Mac Pro will be here tomorrow.

I then have the task of moving a lifetime of documents, images, music, and files from this PC to the mac pro.

The BIGGEST concern is my business and work files. They are mainly Photoshop PSD's (and all the other Adobe program files, Illustrator, Indesign, PDF's) and then a bunch of html/php/css and Flash files. They are all in a hugely complex folder structure for my work, divided by client, business, site name, and other. Right now, my work files alone constitute around 100,000 files in someodd 9000 folders. So, I am a little nervous just "dragging and dropping" that much data from my PC to my Mac (and then using the new Mac located files to then backup). I want to be sure that the files on my mac are all bonafide and proper.

Can I just copy the files from the PC to the mac and not worry about things like the file extensions and folder structure? Best to do this over a network to avoid file-system irregularities when using an external hard drive? Or maybe use MacDrive to view my Mac External 500gig drive I ordered, copy all my files to that, and then copy those to the Mac Pro internal drives. As it is right now, all those files and folders are on NTFS drives.


I know all my questions might seem simple to experience mac people, but this Mac Pro is the singular entity which supports my family, pays my bills, and puts food on the table. I don't want to just copy my work files/folders over willy nilly.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[SpookTheHamster]

I put everything from my PC onto DVDs, but I wasn't working with as much stuff as you.

Macs can read NTFS drives, so you could even put the PC drive straight into your Mac Pro and copy from there.

 

[SolrFlare]

For ultimate security, I wouldn't do it on the windows side of things as Windows Explorer is kind of notorious for choking when managing large data transfers.

The best solution, I think, would be to transfer the files over a network from OS X's end. *or* get an external HDD enclosure then pull the HDD out of the PC and hook it directly into the Mac Pro for file transfer(or plug the HDD directly into your Mac Pro).

Also, to avoid potential permission issues,be sure to remove any login password temporarily from your windows machine before the transfer(you can always set it back afterwards). There are plenty of ways around that mind you, but that's the easiest way on the windows side of things to make your life easier.

Good luck and welcome to Mac land, after a few weeks you'll find it hard to go back to windows ever again

 

[oliverlubin]

I put everything from my PC onto DVDs, but I wasn't working with as much stuff as you.

Macs can read NTFS drives, so you could even put the PC drive straight into your Mac Pro and copy from there.

both these suggestions are great.

back up all the stuff to DVDs and then format that external 500gb drive as NTFS, copy all stuff you'll from your PC, then plug it into your Mac Pro, copy to mac (can read just fine). Once copied, reformat that external drive as HFS+ (or whatever you want) and you'll be good to go from there.

 

[SpookTheHamster]

Also, to avoid potential permission issues,be sure to remove any login password temporarily from your windows machine before the transfer(you can always set it back afterwards). There are plenty of ways around that mind you, but that's the easiest way on the windows side of things to make your life easier.

OS X doesn't pay any attention to password protected folders. I used it to get into my old My Documents folder when Windows wouldn't let me in as it was password protected.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

Well, everything I need is already backed up to a NTFS external firewire drive, that's my windows "backup" drive... so it sounds like I could just copy from that straight into OSX.

About burning DVD's... well... part of the reason I got a new Mac Pro is that my computer is so old, I don't have modern things like DVD burners

 

[Hmac]

Mac Pro will be here tomorrow.

I then have the task of moving a lifetime of documents, images, music, and files from this PC to the mac pro.

The BIGGEST concern is my business and work files. They are mainly Photoshop PSD's (and all the other Adobe program files, Illustrator, Indesign, PDF's) and then a bunch of html/php/css and Flash files. They are all in a hugely complex folder structure for my work, divided by client, business, site name, and other. Right now, my work files alone constitute around 100,000 files in someodd 9000 folders. So, I am a little nervous just "dragging and dropping" that much data from my PC to my Mac (and then using the new Mac located files to then backup). I want to be sure that the files on my mac are all bonafide and proper.

Can I just copy the files from the PC to the mac and not worry about things like the file extensions and folder structure? Best to do this over a network to avoid file-system irregularities when using an external hard drive? Or maybe use MacDrive to view my Mac External 500gig drive I ordered, copy all my files to that, and then copy those to the Mac Pro internal drives. As it is right now, all those files and folders are on NTFS drives.


I know all my questions might seem simple to experience mac people, but this Mac Pro is the singular entity which supports my family, pays my bills, and puts food on the table. I don't want to just copy my work files/folders over willy nilly.

Any thoughts on this?

I just did this very thing...from my 3 home PC's to my new Mac Pro. It could not have been simpler...nothing more than drag and drop.

Put the Mac on your home network. Go to System Preferences -> Internet and Network -> Sharing. Check the boxes to enable both Personal File Sharing and Windows Sharing. At the bottom the dialog box, you'll see a notation "Windows users can access your computer at \\xx.x.x.xxx\mac computer name". Go to your Windows PC (also on the network, of course), go to Network Places -> New Network Place and enter that same network URL and computer name. You'll then get a Mac folder on the PC from your Mac's boot drive's root. You can select "documents" from the Mac and just drag whatever files you want from your PC into that folder on the Mac document. Depending on the speed of your network, it may take awhile, but for me it could not have been easier to transfer those multiple gigabytes of images, documents and videos. The hardest part was converting 4 years of Outlook Express emails to Mail format and getting them into Mac Mail. Even that wasn't hard, just cumbersome and did require download a (free) mbox conversion program. I think it would have been simpler if I had chosen to use Entourage for email on the Mac instead of Mail - I think I could have skipped the conversion process.

No, you don't have to worry about file extensions. Leave them all alone. Note that Quicktime won't play .WMV files unless you download (free) and install Flip-4-Mac converter.

There are other ways to do it, but this is by far the simplest and most straightforward. I was dreading this task as the most complicated and cumbersome of the Mac/PC switchover, but it turned out to be the easiest. My fallback plan was transfer all the data from the PC onto an external, then plug the external into the Mac. Cumbersome and lengthy process if you're talking a USB 2.0 enclosure instead of Firewire 800.

 

[odinsride]

I just put all my stuff on an External HD from windows, hooked it up to my mac and copied it all off the External HD. No problems at all.