New iMac clean setup

[IndyBob]

My new iMac Retina is arriving in a few days and I would really like to do a clean/new setup and not use migration from my Time Machine backup. My thinking on this is that I will not have a bunch of stuff brought over from previous updates on the 2012 iMac.

I want to makes sure though that after the new one is setup I can connect my Time Machine drive and restore my iTunes, Photo’s library file and my emails that are stored in several folders in On My Mac part of the Mail app.

Maybe I am over thinking this.

I have not had any real problems since I got the 2012 iMac except a few days ago when I tried to connect a new Thunderbay Mini 4 with 4 SSD drives and SoftRaid installed from OWC. It was crashing a lot and OWC recommended I re-install OS.


Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions.

 

[Weaselboy]

iTunes and Photos are easy. Once the new machine is setup just attach the TM disk then in the TM menu option click and select browse other disks and pick the TM backup. Once you are in just navigate to the Music folder then restore the entire contents of that folder to the Music folder on the iMac. Then afterwards to the same thing for the Pictures folder to get your Photos library.

Mail is not so easy. Who is your email provider and what kind of service is it... like IMAP or POP3 etc?

 

[IndyBob]

I use Google Apps Gmail.

The messages I am concerned about are the ones I have moved to folders I have made in the iMac. There are in the Apple Mail app under an area titled "On My Mac" or "Stored on My Mac"

 

[Weaselboy]

I use Google Apps Gmail.

The messages I am concerned about are the ones I have moved to folders I have made in the iMac. There are in the Apple Mail app under an area titled "On My Mac" or "Stored on My Mac"

In theory if you move over the folder ~/Library/Mail it will get the locally saved mails, but people seem to have trouble with this.

How many local messages are we talking about? Since you are already using Gmail and it saves everything on the server, I would just move those all back to a temp folder on the Gmail server (using Mail). Then setup Gmail as a new account on the iMac and all the messages will get pulled in from Gmail. Then you can move them back to the local folder if you want.