Migrating documents to my new air

[riveting]

Hello,

I just got a new 13inch 2011 MBA to replace my old Rev. A MBA. I used the migration assistant, so it is currently transfering. Estimating another 8.5 hours remaining (is this normal?) so I had to wait till tomorrow morning to see how it goes.

However, I do have some question here. My old air is running snow leopard, and I have a windows 7 installed via parallel 6.0, Would my windows partition (file) be transferred to my new air and everything including the software on my windows be there?

 

[hfg]

Parallels will be there, however I don't believe you will find your Windows images. You will have to transfer those manually.

 

[riveting]

By transfer manually, you mean copy the file that stores the windows?

Unfortunately, the migration process stuck at 5 hours because of a glitch in my wireless network, however, even my network now works OK, the migration assistant won't move, so I have to do it all over again.

Parallels will be there, however I don't believe you will find your Windows images. You will have to transfer those manually.

 

[hfg]

If you can use a wired ethernet, it will be much faster than the WiFi method. Or get a USB external portable disk and do a backup, then restore to your new computer (my preferred method). If you have to buy one (they are pretty cheap these days), you can use it for a backup drive after you are done with the migration.

Your Windows Virtual Machines are probably in a folder (I use VMware "Fusion" which puts a VM folder in your "documents" directory) and is probably 20-30GB in size depending on how much Windows stuff you have loaded. Simply copy that to the same location on your new computer after the Migration Assistant has finished doing the OS X stuff. If your Parallels doesn't find it (it probably will), you can probably start by double-clicking on the virtual machine image and it will load Parallels and run.


-howard

 

[deeddawg]

Or get a USB external portable disk and do a backup, then restore to your new computer (my preferred method). If you have to buy one (they are pretty cheap these days), you can use it for a backup drive after you are done with the migration.

Emphasis mine. The fastest way to do migration assistant is probably to use an external hard disk. Do a Time Machine backup on the original system, then Migration Assistant on the new one.

Furthermore, if you don't have an external drive or other way to do backups you're begging for trouble. With 1TB external 2.5" drives at $80 from Newegg, there's no reason not to have one and do regular backups. You can save a few bucks and go for a 500GB drive, but not enough IMHO to justify halving the capacity.

Sorry if I sound preachy, but running without backups is like driving around without a seatbelt. Chances are you'll someday have a crash, and it hurts a lot more without a backup. Check out the prices for data recovery services or software.

 

[riveting]

I do have a 320G external HD, but it used to be NTFS format, what format should I format the HD to in order to be able to be used for both Mac and PC, would FAT 32 work? Or would I be better just to format to some Mac-only format?

 

[kjlake]

FAT32 will work for both Mac and PC - You may need a utility to format a drive that size though.

 

[hfg]

If you need compatibility for both OS X and Windows, use the "ExFAT" formatting option in Disk Utility.

If you can dedicate this drive to OS X as a backup drive after your migration to the new machine, use the "Mac OS Extended Journaled" format for best performance.




-howard

 

[riveting]

I find that the migration assistant copied the windows virtual machine file under parallel folder. However, when I am trying to load it, it just says "unable to load parallel driver"