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migration assistant not offering option to transfer to another mac

C

cazza

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 15, 2008
6
0
I'm trying to migrate from an imac (tiger) to a macbook air (leopard), but on the imac I'm not offered the option to transfer information to another mac, only from.

The macbook air doesn't have firewire, so it needs to be done over ethernet. Any suggestions? I'm a complete newbie to macs, so please be gentle with me .
 
cazza said:
I'm trying to migrate from an imac (tiger) to a macbook air (leopard), but on the imac I'm not offered the option to transfer information to another mac, only from.

The macbook air doesn't have firewire, so it needs to be done over ethernet. Any suggestions? I'm a complete newbie to macs, so please be gentle with me .
Click to expand...
I recommend neither FireWire nor Ethernet, in your case. I'd clone your iMac to an external USB drive with a program such as Carbon Copy Cloner, or SuperDuper, then use Migration Assistant to migrate the user settings to your MacBook Air by connecting the drive to the MBA's USB port.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that you'll want to choose "From another partition on this Mac" in Migration Assistant.
 
Thanks. Impressively fast response. Would either of those utilities copy my software and user settings over?
 
Those utility will clone everything to the external drive, that is you will get an exact copy of the cloned system, with settings, apps, ...
Migrations assistant will then let you transfer them from the external to the new MacBook Air.
 
Surely that would then make my macbook air tiger rather than leopard, or can I pick out the apps/settings etc and just import them?
 
cazza said:
Surely that would then make my macbook air tiger rather than leopard, or can I pick out the apps/settings etc and just import them?
Click to expand...
No, it won't - Migration Assistant is smart enough not to transfer the System files. It only transfers your user data and global preferences.
 
If the iMac uses an Intel processor, you can boot it into target disk mode, and connect it directly to the Air with a USB cable.
 
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