Moving files to new Mavericks iMac system

[BESLC]

I placed my order this morning for my new iMac...now I have a question on saving files and photos from old system.

My old system is running Snow Leopard with an external Time Machine backup. My question is, can I plug the Time machine external drive into the new machine to transfer backed-up files and photos? I know there is an option for a Time Machine backup(or there was on my old system at start up), which displays at initial start up.

If this can be done, are there any compatibility issues between Snow Leopard and Mavericks files? Do I just select install from Time Machine backup?

If it is not possible to do this or a better method for saving files and photos ,I would appreciate your assistance..thank you in advance.

 

[Bear]

Yes Mavericks will prompt you for migrating files and yes you can use your Time Machine backup for it. It works fine. You may want to check Energy Saver preferences since they a tad different on the new iMac.

And you're not installing from the Time Machine backup, you're migrating from it.

 

[BESLC]

Yes Mavericks will prompt you for migrating files and yes you can use your Time Machine backup for it. It works fine. You may want to check Energy Saver preferences since they a tad different on the new iMac.

And you're not installing from the Time Machine backup, you're migrating from it.

Thank you for your reply, I am not clear on what you mean by checking Energy Saver Preferences. could you please explain?

 

[robgendreau]

As noted, migrate fromt the old TM backup; don't confuse it with restore.

And have it available when you get the new Mac going; it's easiest to do the migration the very, very first time you boot up the new Mac. Otherwise you can run into situations with user IDs.

And yes, there may be file incompatibilities. You're using some old system software, which means you may be using applications that will not run at all in Mavericks. SL allowed some very old applications to run via Rosetta; that's gone in Mavericks. So if you had say files from Appleworks you may have issues using those with new applications in Mavericks. Hard to say without knowing what you use.

Rob

 

[Bear]

Thank you for your reply, I am not clear on what you mean by checking Energy Saver Preferences. could you please explain?

If you never change the Energy Saver preferences in System Preferences, then don't worry about it. If you customized them, you probably need to check what they come up as on the new iMac.