Migration Tech Support?
March 12, 2010 1:20 PM Subscribe
I'm using a MacBook Pro at home. I just bought a used MacBook Air I want to use on trips. I want to set up the Air so it works as much as possible like the Pro. But I don't want to trash the software and music that are already on the Air. What's the best way to migrate from a Pro to an Air without completely erasing what's on the Air?
Possible complication: the Air is running Mac OS 10.6. The Pro is running 10.4. I could upgrade the Pro to 10.6 but I hate changing the OS on a computer that's running without problems.
Both computers are currently backed up via Time Machine onto a Time Capsule. But if I Restore the Pro onto the Air, it will trash the music and software on the Air.
Will Migration Assistant trash the software and music? Is there something even better than Migration Assistant?
Possible complication: the Air is running Mac OS 10.6. The Pro is running 10.4. I could upgrade the Pro to 10.6 but I hate changing the OS on a computer that's running without problems.
Both computers are currently backed up via Time Machine onto a Time Capsule. But if I Restore the Pro onto the Air, it will trash the music and software on the Air.
Will Migration Assistant trash the software and music? Is there something even better than Migration Assistant?
Upgrade the Pro to 10.6 — it will run faster, anyway — and use Migration Assistant to copy the account data from the Air to the Pro.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:56 PM on March 12, 2010
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:56 PM on March 12, 2010
Migration Assistant will ask you what to do if the users are the same (i.e. you have a musofire account on both) - you can rename either account and, I believe, merge. you can also deselect things you want to merge. it'll give you a list of stuff that's coming over and you can turn things off as you see fit. it'll generally not overwrite applications unless you have newer on one system, I believe; I've certainly never seen it do that.
if you're OK with it not being totally the same: another option would be to drop the music on the MacBook Pro onto some sort of shared space - maybe if you have extra space on your Time Capsule, or by hooking an external HDD to it? - and then just adding it to the library on the Air (after turning off "Copy music to iTunes Library" first, of course). you'd have to connect to the Capsule to get all your music, but you could keep a small amount on the Air and, when you're at home, it'd be fairly seamless. (I'm assuming you keep your music in iTunes.) you can copy things to your Air's iTunes library by right-clicking and hitting Consolidate from there. for the rest of it, you could use something like Dropbox, which will automatically sync things to each computer (and act as a sort of off-site backup anyway). could be somewhat pricy if you have a lot of data, though. then just set everything else up like you have it on your Pro.
posted by mrg at 5:54 PM on March 12, 2010
if you're OK with it not being totally the same: another option would be to drop the music on the MacBook Pro onto some sort of shared space - maybe if you have extra space on your Time Capsule, or by hooking an external HDD to it? - and then just adding it to the library on the Air (after turning off "Copy music to iTunes Library" first, of course). you'd have to connect to the Capsule to get all your music, but you could keep a small amount on the Air and, when you're at home, it'd be fairly seamless. (I'm assuming you keep your music in iTunes.) you can copy things to your Air's iTunes library by right-clicking and hitting Consolidate from there. for the rest of it, you could use something like Dropbox, which will automatically sync things to each computer (and act as a sort of off-site backup anyway). could be somewhat pricy if you have a lot of data, though. then just set everything else up like you have it on your Pro.
posted by mrg at 5:54 PM on March 12, 2010
Why not use Home Sharing in iTunes to sync up the music between the two? You might have to update your iTunes on the Pro though but after that it should be pretty simple to do.
Not sure what else you wanted to do to make the Air like the Pro.
posted by fenriq at 11:36 PM on March 12, 2010
Not sure what else you wanted to do to make the Air like the Pro.
posted by fenriq at 11:36 PM on March 12, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Gungho at 1:28 PM on March 12, 2010