Procedural advice requested (re migrate & upgrade)

[Qgirl]

I will list what I have and what I want to do, then my questions:

Late 2006 iMac (5,1) running Snow Leopard, 10.6.8 (mine)
Early 2009 iMac (9,1) running Snow Leopard, 10.6.8 (husband's) -- ram upgraded to 6 gb.

Want to do two things:

- Migrate my data from 2006 iMac to new user account on husband's 2009 iMac. Will use Migration Assistant via ethernet cable.

- Upgrade OS of 2009 iMac. Snow Leopard is comfortable but alas, obsolete.

Please note, this will then be mostly my computer, since husband lives on his iPad. I prefer computers to tablets. Late 2006 iMac will be retired, with hugs and appreciation for years of good service; just getting too hard to do anything on it.


So here are the QUESTIONS:

1. What order should I do this in? First migrate data, then upgrade OS, or vice versa?

2. Should I go all the way to Mavericks, or buy an intermediate OS for $20, Lion or Mountain Lion? (All will be new and unfamiliar to me, for the moment.)

Your guidance will be greatly appreciated.

 

[robgendreau]

I'd backup first...

Then do the OS upgrade. Although you're just moving a user account if things don't work out I'd want there to be one less variable. And make sure you can access things and have permissions all sorted with his account.

Then migrate yours. Make sure you have admin privileges.

See the stuff at pondini.org; it has some tips in case there are issues.

And whether to go to Mavericks is a personal choice. Perhaps you can install it on a partition or external and try it for a while to see if it meets your needs.

 

[Qgirl]

Thank you, thank you! (I should have said I did back up the "new" computer and the older computer is running Time Machine every hour, so all data is safe.)

The only reason I considered that it might be good to migrate before updating was in case it would help to be using the same operating system on both ends.

My question about which OS to upgrade to is more about the likelihood of seamless success on a 5-year-old computer (though it does meet posted specs for Mavericks) than which I would like best... Snow Leopard is not supported anymore, Safari isn't updated, I have to do something...


PS Thanks for the pondini.org tip, very helpful!