please help me migrate. I'm exchanging computers

[Letters]

so I recently bought an imac, it was an upgrade from my old powerbook. I was able to migrate all of my information from my PB into the imac with no problem.

Now, I want to exchange my imac for a macbook, the problem is I have no where to put all of the info that's on my imac.
I don't have an external drive of any sort, and my only option is burning backup DVD's of all my info, then (hopefully) restoring everything onto the new macbook.

I would rather wipe the HD, before taking it back to the apple store and asking if they will migrate my contents from the imac to the mb

So far, the the best option I can think of is, copying my entire home folder with Roxio toast onto dvd's and hope for the best. I'm not even sure if that will work, as I've never done this before.

Any suggestions on the best way to go about this, with dvd's, and has anyone has done this that can give me some advice.


Thanks

 

[theimp]

I work at best buy, a lot of times people will buy an external hard drive, use it for what they need to migrate, and return it (dont know how ethical that is!). As long as you have the receipt, and the box and stuff they will return it for 30 days. I would rather do that than burn it to DVDs just in case.

 

[WildCowboy]

How much data are we talking about? And what kind of stuff is it?

 

[gr8tfly]

You should be able to use Firewire and put one of the two machines into Target Disk Mode. (Probably the iMac) It makes the machine behave like an external harddrive.

Example:
Shutdown the iMac.
Connect the two machines with a Firewire cable.
Hold down the "T" key while starting the iMac.
You should see the Firewire logo on the iMac.
The iMac's harddrive should now show up on the new MacBook's desktop.

ref: Apple KB article http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583

 

[Letters]

its only about 35 gigs, and it's my entire home folder...music, pictures, docs etc.

 

[WildCowboy]

The way I understand it, you can't directly migrate from the iMac to the MacBook because you won't really have them at the same time. Is that correct? You could possibly do it in-store at the time of the exchange, but moving the data, then doing an Erase and Install to wipe the iMac would take a good bit of time, so that's not really an option.

Do you still have the PowerBook that you could use to hold the data temporarily?

 

[ChrisA]

Now, I want to exchange my imac for a macbook, the problem is I have no where to put all of the info that's on my imac.
I don't have an external drive of any sort, and my only option is burning backup DVD's of all my info, then (hopefully) restoring everything onto the new macbook.

I would rather wipe the HD, before taking it back to the apple store and asking if they will migrate my contents from the imac to the mb

Thanks

And about the external drive. Buy two. You will need them for backups. and YES get TWO. and rotate them. You never want to write over your only good backup.

 

[Letters]

nope, I don't have access to the powerbook anymore. It was sold off.

Right now all I have is a pack of blank dvd's in the hopes I could, get everything backed up, do a fresh install of tiger on the imac before returning it, and doing the exchange first thing tomorrow.
I was hoping I could do the migration without having to spend anything extra, but it seems like getting an external hard drive is a much better option, less time and less of a chance of somthing going wrong...I would need one in the long run anyway.