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Trytryagain

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 30, 2021
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Hi all,
New here and not very computer savvy. Hoping I can find some help!

I have an older 27” iMac running 10.8. The computer is from I’m guessing around 2008. I want to upgrade this outdated machine to something new and I am not totally sure the best way to transfer over my pictures and videos. The machine is full of family photos and video from the last 15 years. The machine is still running with iPhoto and I believe it is too old to upgrade to any newer iOS. I don’t believe there is an appleID associated with this machine just a user name. My wife and I currently are using our Apple ids on our phones and MacBooks but this iMac has sort of been used for a storage for all of our old media (about 2tb worth). Ultimately I would like to have a new iMac, logged into my wife’s Apple ID and have all of this media integrated into her cloud (synced with her iPhone and macbook)

so I guess my questions are this.
- what is the best way to do this?
- can I bring over my iPhoto library and import it into photos with this much of an age gap between operating systems?
- I would like to leave everything else behind on this computer other than images and videos.
- will my old .mov files open with a new machine? Currently if I offload them to a hard drive and attempt to watch them the go through some sort of “converting” stage in QuickTime. If I open them on the old machine from the drive they open perfectly fine. I’m worried that what ever is causing this might create a migration failure with the files!
Thanks and would very very much appreciate any help someone may offer!
 
The best way to do:

1. on your 27" iMac, sign in with your Apple ID.
2. Purchase an icloud plan that can hold all of your files. (max is 4TB)
3. Back up them all to iCloud
4. Buy a 5TB external HDD.
5. Make a 2nd back-up to the external HDD. Move the external HDD to your new Mac and use it as external storage.
Now you can erase your iMac HDD and reset it to factory setting.
You can always check what model your iMac is from the top left menu 'About This Mac"
 
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Do you have a Time Machine backup? If so, you can use it during the first startup of a new Mac to transfer stuff (selectively, if you want) that lives on the old machine.

If you do not currently use Time Machine, you should consider buying an external hard drive and setting up Time Machine on your old Mac right away. It's always good to have a backup, especially if you have irreplaceable photos and videos stored on your computer.

Otherwise, I would buy the new machine. Then I would connect the old Mac to the new Mac via an Ethernet cable and let Setup Assistant take care of the transfer during first startup. Apple's website has a lot of detail on how to do this. I would hold off on erasing the old Mac, buying cloud storage, and creating new versions of your media until you have the new machine up and running to your satisfaction.

For photos, macOS has replaced iPhoto with Photos. As I recall, the first time you launch Photos, you will be able to select your iPhoto library for conversion to a Photos library. Again, I would not delete any pictures from your old Mac until you can verify the conversion was successful.

Finally, I have a lot of .mov files that were created on a series of old Macs and previous versions of OSX/macOS. They all remain viewable on my current system.
 
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Thank you for your reply’s, much appreciated. I have a couple of more questions. I do have a time machine backup. As well as I have copies of pictures and videos stored on hard drives.
-If I were to transfer over via cable to the new machine, would I setup the new machine first with logins etc and then connect them to do the transferring?
- I have heard that there may be problems transferring media over if the user names on the machines don’t match?
- when I transfer via cable with apples setup assistant, can I chose to bring over only my iPhoto library and leave the rest behind?
- would you guys sign in with my wife’s Apple ID before I transfer items over or transfer everything over and then sign in?
My end goal is to have her signed into her id on the new computer, and her iCloud to have all of our old iPhoto library as well as her new photos library merged all together under her account.
Thanks!
 
My suggestions:

I would back up the old iMac to an external drive using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. Both of these are FREE to download and use for 30 days.

These utilties create "cloned" backups.
That means the external drive is AN EXACT COPY of the source drive.
You can even boot from it (on the old Mac).

A cloned backup "mounts in the finder" like any other drive.
There's nothing special about it.

But what this will REALLY be useful for, is that it's an immediately-accessible "archive" that you can have at-hand with "your old stuff" on it.

You can also use it for "migration" to the NEW Mac when it's ready to be set up.

You didn't tell us the capacity of the internal drive on the old iMac you're using now.
Is it 1tb? 2tb?
 
Thanks for the advice. The internal drive I have is a T2 size and is completely full with only a couple 100 gb to spare.
For what I am trying to accomplish would be easier to just set up a new iMac, login with my wife’s Apple ID and then just manually batch import pictures and video from an external drive into photos?
I guess I was hoping to keep all of the events and organization of this media intact. Would this method maintain the media’s meta data?
Thanks!
 
If you use setup assistant during the original setup procedure, it should "bring over" pre-existing organization, etc.

Questions:
Does your wife really, really need all those old files "on the Mac"?
Or... might some of them be moved to an external "archive"?
 
I guess she doesn’t really need everything. I guess I assumed it would be an efficient way to organize and merge all of our existing media together into one library?
Sorry if this is a dumb question as I’ve never used the setup assistant before but can I select to only bring over my iPhoto library when I’m setting up? I’d like to leave everything else behind. Also is there any issue with permissions if I setup the new Mac with a different user name?
Thanks!
 
It's been a while since I used setup assistant (or migration assistant), but I think that it gives you the option of "going inside" a home folder (that is to be migrated) and DE-selecting things you don't want brought over.

So... you could DE-select everything except the iPhoto library and migrate [only] that.

Hmmmm.... iPhoto has been replaced by Photos for a while now. I will -guess- that setup assistant will migrate it anyway (but not sure). If it doesn't, you could always "move it by hand" (but steps have to be taken to avoid permissions problems if you do it manually...)
 
Ok great. Thank you for the help I am going to give it a try with the assistant. Do you for see any permission problems if the new computer uses a different user name than the old one ?
Thanks!
 
Setup assistant takes care of permissions when you let it handle the migration.

If you move things manually, it's best to do this:
- mount the drive on the desktop (on which the stuff your moving resides)
- click on its icon and bring up "get info" (command-i)
- click the lock at the bottom of get info and enter your [new Mac's] password
- put a check into "ignore ownership on this volume" (sharing & permissions)
- close get info

Now anything you copy to the new Mac will "come under the ownership" of the account you're using on the new Mac...
 
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