Transferring Files from old PB to new MBP

Hey I just got a new MBP and I have been using a Powerbook G4 for a few years. I want to transfer my stuff from the PB to the MBP but I dont want to transfer all the junk and random stuff I have accumulated, just some key folders like My Docs and Music and Photos and all that fun stuff. I have never used the Migration utility thing that you can use when you first start a new Mac. Should I use this? I was also just thinking about using Target Disk Mode and throwing a Firewire 800 between the two laptops. Any thoughts on that method? Thanks a lot.

daniel123456,
Firewire 800 rocks for transferring between the machines (this is what I used when migrating from my PB). I do not recommend using the Migration Assistant, however, especially given your desire to transfer limited stuff.
I would connect the two, with the PB in TDM, then simply drag what you want into your new HOME folder on the Macbook Pro.
Scott

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Transferring Files from Old Computer to New Computer

I upgraded my iTunes to 9.1.1 on my old computer (and new computer). On the old computer, I have everything organized in playlists. When I transferred all my music from my old computer to my new computer (via ipod), my playlists do not show up. All the songs are in Music on the top of iTunes. Is there anyway to transfer the itunes exactly as it appears on my old computer to my new computer? Would a USB transfer cable take care of this problem? Please help

Hi there,
what you did is only transfer all of the MEDIA files into your new computer's iTunes. There is no problem with doing this, but all the media files include are well, the media obviously, and the tagging info (which displays name/artist/album/etc.) If all you do is move the media files onto the new computer and load iTunes, a new copy of iTunes (with no playlists/ratings/play counts and new settings) will load up, and put your content in it.
If you wish to preserve your playlists/ratings/etc, you need to import the iTunes Library File as well. This is by default located in your iTunes directory. So instead of just moving everything from "iTunes Media" (default location), it is best to move the ENTIRE "iTunes" folder, with the Library file and your media files.
However, one trick may still work. If you transfer JUST the Library file over (iTunes Library.itl), transfer it to your new computer, REPLACE the current iTunes Library file with the old one (so delete the new one, put the old one there). Open iTunes while holding SHIFT down the whole time, until a screen pops up asking you to find a library. Select choose library, and go to the location of the Library file we just moved. Select it, and if all goes well your playlists should be there!
You might come across one issue however, and that is if you changed the relative location of your media files. For example if you USED to have it on an external drive "my Music" and now it is on the internal drive in a folder labeled "iTunes Music", the computer may not be able to find your songs because it is looking in the wrong place. If that happens, and you are willing to lose your play counts and ratings, it actually might be more of a time saver to start over again and make your playlists from scratch.

Transfering Music from old computer to new MBP laptop HELP!

I nees to transfer ALL of my iTunes music to my new MBP, can I just put all of my music onto a flash drive and then deauthorize that computer, then put songs from flashdrive on the MBP and authorize that computer? If I do this will my music still be organized like it was on my ild PC? Like album name, artist, title, etc? Answer ASAP please and thanks in advance!

Okay. What do you want from this process? Do you want iTunes to appear exactly as it did on your old computer? The way I have described several times before tells you how to do this. Copy the WHOLE ITUNES FOLDER from your Finder (you do not say what source computer) or Windows browser or whatever, to the flash drive. Drag it from the flash drive to your new computer and replace the iTunes folder on the new computer (I presume you have nothing in it now). Start iTunes and everything will appear identical to your old computer. Playlists, artwork, everything. Three major steps. Drag, (move flash drive to other computer), drag, open iTunes.
The video tells you in a somewhat long-winded (and in my opinion not necessarily best) way to end up copying just your media files to a flash drive. It then adds them all back into iTunes where if all works well iTunes will end up processing them as though it has never seen them before. If that's what you want, fine, because that's what it does. If the tags are correct on the files you will see the names, etc., but with the qualifiers I mentioned before. You say you want them organized like they were on the old computer. For most people this means ratings and playcounts and playlists. That is not what you will get if you drag just media from drive to drive via the flash drive. You will only accomplish that using the whole folder method I have described. If you do not want your old playlists well, I guess you can do the video method, but even then my method is easier and you can always delete unwanted playlists.
The video method is essentially the same process if the source computer is a Mac, again if your goals is to start over with a fresh library but your old media files.

Transferring files from old macbook to new

I'm trying to transfer files and programs from old macbook pro to new one, but run into problems using Migration Assistant, and time machine. Not sure what to do differently...

Probably the most straightforward way to get iTunes onto your new computer is to network the two and copy your iTunes folder across. This works fine if you have been using iTunes to completely manage your music and all your songs are in iTunes Music not in different folders. Connecting two Mac computers using Ethernet
Another way is to put your original computer into target disk mode and copy the data over Firewire: How to use FireWire target disk mode
Copying the whole folder brings with it the iTunes Music folder and also the iTunes Library (iTunes Library.itl in Windows) database file which holds all the information about your songs (Playlists, Ratings, Play Counts, Last Played, Date Added, etc). You'll get more information including the Folder/File structure in this article: What are the iTunes library files?
When you copy the iTunes folder make sure you put it into the same location on the new computer. This has to be the exact same place, on a Mac this would be in Username/Music/. When you open iTunes on the new computer it will be the same as on the original one Songs, Playlists, Play Counts, Ratings etc. When I moved iTunes a while ago for my daughter I was also using the same version of iTunes, not sure how important that is but it's probably worth keeping them the same.

Transferring files from old computer to new one

I just purchased an HP Envy 700 series and am trying to transfer my files from my old computer. My problem is that the old computer has a fried motherboard so I put the old hard drive in an external case and hooked it up to the new computer to transfer the files. When I try to access the "users" folder on the old drive I get a message telling me I don't have permission to access the folder. Is there anything I can do to get past this?

The OS on the old computer was Windows 7 Home and the new one is Windows 7 Pro.
I have developed a work around for my problem. I put the old hard drive in an external case and then hooked it up to my laptop. I then lower the User Account Control setting to its lowest setting (after I turn off my access to the internet) and then I am able to access all the files in the account that was blocked before. It is tedious trying to transfer many GB's of data using a thumb drive but it is getting done.

Transfering files from old mac to new mac

I just bought a iMac G5 and started it up and it asked if I wanted to transfer files from my old mac. I selected yes. And it began transferring. It looked like everything was going fine until I checked on it about 30 minutes later and it looked like it hadn't progressed at all. I checked on it another 30 minutes later and it said 1 hour 6 minutes remaining and hasn't moved since. I don't understand why it's not going further. And it's taking forever! Am I just too impatient. I'm transferring 5GB from my old PowerPC G4 mac using a firewire cable. Any help is much appreciated. I have no idea why it's not working.

A couple of other things to consider Emille,
1. Make sure your data is really going through the firewire cable and not a wireless network. Going through an ethernet or firewire cable would be much faster. It may have been possible that even though you had a cable connected, It may have tried to do it wirelessly anyway.
2. Were either of them going to sleep?
3. Make sure no other firewire devices are plugged in.
Joe

Transferring Files from Old iMAC to New iMAC

I just a new iMAC. I went through the setup process that transferred the files and user YoungFamily from my old one to my new one. Great.
BUT, now when I try to get into the new iMAC it prompts me for a password for YoungFamily... I never set one up as its a home computer and doesn't need one. So, I'm wondering what the password would be.. I can't log in to the new machine! 8-(
Andy

Hi Andy,
See this support topic, under subhead "Resetting the original administrator account password"
-mj
[email protected]

Stuck transferring files from old iMac to new

Have new iMac connected to old via FireWire as directed during initial setup of new iMac. Transferring no more than 180GB and the transfer is stuck claiming About 7 hours and 15 minutes remaining. Old iMac was running fine (slow, but fine) and this has been stuck for the last hour or so. Unsure as to OS as the Mac is still in setup mode.

Well, there is very little drive activity from the old iMac BUT I restarted it and started the process over, de-selecting some of the items. Same results though I let it sit for a couple of hours and now it claims there is five hours left. VERY slow but making progress. My guess now is that the iMac's drive was SO fragmented that it is taking an inordinate amount of time to transfer.

Transferring Files from old Mac to New Mac and size is different.

So I have a MBP 13 and I want to move the Documents folder to my new MBA. I popped in a USB drive and just dragged my Documents folder to the USB Drive. It registered right around 4gb with something like 17,000 items.
So when I put the USB in the MBA it still says 4gb with the same amount of files. But when I copy them all it only shows 430 files and something like 500mb.
So I tried as the Root User. When I went it as root, it said it was copying the full 4gb and the 17k items. But when I logged in as the admin and not the Root user it still said the smaller #'s.
Is there a reason for this? It seems like maybe something was copied when I just dragged the Documents folder to the USB. Are there some account specific hidden files or settings or something when I do it that way? I supppose I could just open the docs, select all, and copy that way, but I would like to figure out what is going on here.
TIA
Steve

Have you got access to an external drive that is large enough to hold your entire iTunes folder including the iTunes Music folder? Start by consolidating your library. When you consolidate, any songs in the iTunes Library that are not in the iTunes Music Folder are copied to the Music Folder and the Library is updated to point to those new files. Files already in the iTunes Music Folder have no changes made to them. Attach an external drive and copy over your iTunes folder. Copying the whole folder brings with it the iTunes Music folder and also the iTunes Library (iTunes Library.itl in Windows) database file which holds all the information about your songs (Playlists, Ratings, Play Counts, Last Played, Date Added, etc). You'll get more information including the Folder/File structure in this article: What are the iTunes library files?
When you copy the iTunes folder make sure you put it into the same location on the new computer. This has to be the exact same place, on a Mac this would be in Username/Music/. When you open iTunes on the new computer it will be the same as on the original one Songs, Playlists, Play Counts, Ratings etc. You should also use the same version of iTunes on both computers.

Just transferred files from old macbook to new macbook pro and can't find my documents or music files itunes or garageband

Used emigration assistant and can't find my files. Applications and programs transferred fine but can't find word docs. picture or itunes songs.

Call Apple, you have 30 days of free support.
I tell you this because Apple doesn't think anything is wrong with Migration Assistant, but it's loaded with problems and we volunteers are tired of handling their problems for free.
Call them, make Apple fix it, it's their screwup.
Once they see it's costing them money, perhaps they will quit using it or fix it.
Sorry about the rant, but you can help solve the problem, Apple doesn't pay attention here, it's moderated and that's about it.

Transferred library from old PC to new, lost all files dl'd from ITunes

Transferred music files from old pc to new with minimal difficulty, but have now realized all songs downloaded to my library from ITunes have failed to make the trip!
I used the Ipod itself to transfer the files, as I couldn't figure out how to get the 2 pc's to transfer files via a wireless connection. Now my 60gb Ipod which had ~5800 songs using ~22gb its memory states it has 5275 songs on it and only 15.7gb available. Where did I manage to screw this up?
I imagine there is a problem where this new computer has not been authorized. True? When I first download some new songs from Itunes, will it then be authorized and my songs will reappear? Why is the amount of memory affected?
Thanks mucho for any available help. I have searched for quite a while, but haven't been able to find someone who has had the same experience or trouble.
G

I'd imagine that's because you had no music files on your newly reformatted drive, and when you reattached your shuffle it loaded an empty file, hence no tunes.
This (transferring the files from computer to computer) was done using the instructions found here.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300173
Don't know if that works for the shuffle, though.

New to mac. While transferring files from old computer to mac I burnt out a brand new flash drive. How do I format a new flash drive so that it will let me transfer stuff from mac to pc or vise versa??

New to mac. While transferring files from old computer to mac I burnt out a brand new flash drive. How do I format a new flash drive so that it will let me transfer stuff from mac to pc or vise versa??

"guess no one can help me. thanks anyway have a great night everyone"
Some of us do find time to sleep.

HT4527 When transferring iTunes from old computer to new computer, even though all of songs were copied over, not all of them went to iTunes, some appear to be stored elsewhere. How can I find these songs, and how do I transfer them to iTunes?

When transferring iTunes from old computer to new computer, all my songs were copied over, but not all of them were stored in iTunes. It appears they are on the computer somewhere, but not on iTunes. Where are these other songs likely to be, and how can I get them onto iTunes? Because of this problem, Apple will not allow me to update my iPhone.

You may/must have had music files stored outside of your iTunes library.
I'd recommend going to the Finder and then via the search box look for files with mp3 aif m4a aac etc. depending on the music format your digital music had. With the list of files shown you should be able to learn which files were stored outside of your music > itunes folder
Chances are they could be burried somewhere under your documents, downloads, desktop, ... we all have different storage and organization habits.
Then when you find the missing files, on the new computer you can do add to library and go to the folder on the other computer where the missing files are - if your systems are networked - or sneak them over using a USB thumb drive or portable hard drive if you have lots of files, or if you like to have an extra backup of that music, copy to optical disc.

HT3258 after transferring data from old mac to new mac, I can't see the transfer files and application on new mac.?

How can I see the data and application that I transferred from Old Mac to New Mac?
Transfer of all the files and application was successful but I can't see it on the New Mac.
Help.

Thanks for your reply
I did reboot the system.
still can't see new user.
One thing though when the system finished transferring the files
at the end a message came up
" 2013-09-11 04:18:05 +0000 Paul Nirwan could not be created.
I did the transfer two times, same thing. first time I used the WiFi
and second time from my back up disk with USB connection, using Migration Assistant.
Second time also said that Paul'Mac already exist, Paul'Mac 2 created.
How can I get rid of first data trasnferred?
It will be using too much space on hard drive if Ileave it therre.

Transferring files from old computer with fire wire

I'm transferring files from my old computer to my new one. The old one has three hard drives. Everything from the startup drive transferred OK over fire wire, but the new computer doesn't see the 2nd and 3rd hard drives on the old one. Is there a way to link these? Thanks!

Click here and follow the instructions, setting up FireWire networking from System Preferences if desired. FireWire Target Disk mode will only connect to the master ATA drive on the ATA 0 bus, and will shut down the computer if there's nothing at that location.
(30151)

Transferring Files from old PB to new MBP

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