Was there a better way to transfer my data?

I just transfered all of my data from an external drive onto a new machine. The old data was from a MB running Tiger and the new machine has Leopard. What happened was that my original MB was replaced by Apple, so I didn't have it in hand anymore.

I had a really hard time with migration assistant b/c it doesn't have an option for an external drive, just for another Mac or a partition or Time Machine. None of which was my set up. My data was backed up using Super Duper, which isn't compatible with Leopard.

I thought if I even tried to use SuperDuper or just copied and pasted my files I could overwrite the Leopard, which was not worth risking.


So I called Apple and asked them how to do it. I was on the phone with them for almost 2 hours, not on hold at all! Talking the whole time! I had to make back ups of a bunch of library and preference folders. Then delete those files from the new machine and copy the old files into those folders. Then I hand selected and copied the Apps. Then iTunes, which they couldn't quite help me with, I figured it out on my own; same for Address book and Mail. And individually all the preferences for the other apps.

So was there a better way? I'm not sure I want to here the answer, lol!

Is everone else who's upgrading to leopard doing it with the same machine or directly connecting their old one to the new one? Seems like I can't be the only one who has to do this...

I have just done this very thing. I transferred all my data from a Tiger based G5 to a new MacBook Pro running Leopard. I chose NOT to transfer my preference settings and other system settings, but rather just my personal data: my personal files, my iTunes database, etc.

Here is what I did. I hooked up my external hard drive to the G5 and copied all of my personal files to it. I also copied my ENTIRE iTunes folder.

Then I moved the hard drive over to the new MBP and reversed the process. The only key part was the iTunes part, where I literally deleted the existing Music/iTunes folder and replaced it with the one I had just copied to my hard driver.

This worked like a champ. Clearly this approach required me to re-install all of my key applications, but I felt that this was best anyway, since in my case, going from a G5 to an Intel based machine, a number of program upgrades were needed anyway.

Using this approach, it took me only four hours to transfer my Mac "world" from one machine to the other.

That is my experience.

It took me 3 hours and change, at the computer the whole time. SuperDuper spoiled me a bit, b/c it was save and walk away until it was done. I thought I could do the same in reserve. No such luck. I am grateful that I have all my stuff on the new machine. Oh, except I have to call Adobe now. That will probably bring me up to 4 hours total.

will migration assistant work if you copies the data to a disk image?

louishen said:

will migration assistant work if you copies the data to a disk image?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I would know how to do that... Would create a disk image on the external along with the superduper clone?

The apple rep left me a VM to see how everything went. He's back tomorrow, so I'll ask him about it then. See if I get any other ideas.