Transferring data from PC to Mac

[box]

I've bought a MacBook Pro to replace my desktop PC and need to transfer my personal files from one to the other. On the PC I've been using a drive partition called 'Data' which is separate to the OS Partition and stores all my user files (pictures, documents, music etc) - about 40GB all in all. I have set up a similar partition on my MacBook and now just need to transfer everything over. I have a USB hard drive at my disposal. If this was a PC to PC transfer, I'd just take a disk image of the original partition and restore it to the new PC, but I'm guessing that since this is an NTFS to HFS transfer, any kind of image transfer and restoration won't work. The other option is to do a simple drag and drop (I believe OSX can read NTFS?), but I'm assuming this is nowhere near as reliable.

So...what's the best and most reliable way to get this done?

 

[FreeStream]

Firstly, don't bother separating up your system and data. Its a waste of time and honestly, its effort. I've done this on my mac pro and the aggro I had when reinstalling to Snow Leopard was even for a long standing mac user like me, a pain.

The only reason for doing this on a PC incase it goes **** up and you need to reinstall.

This does not 99.9% of the time happen on a mac. Make it one partition and leave it like that, keep a time machine backup and everyone is happy.

Network the two together, share the macs drive, drag and drop, leave it to get on with it.

 

[box]

Why did you have aggro when reinstalling? I find it just makes everything easier having all my user files in one place, irrespective of OS. If I ever need to move my life onto a different comp, it's all there sitting on one partition, as opposed to being strewn throughout the OS. But then I suppose I could just keep everything in my home folder.

I will give drag and drop a go. Just worried about stuff getting corrupted really.

Thanks!

 

[FreeStream]

Why did you have aggro when reinstalling? I find it just makes everything easier having all my user files in one place, irrespective of OS. If I ever need to move my life onto a different comp, it's all there sitting on one partition, as opposed to being strewn throughout the OS. But then I suppose I could just keep everything in my home folder.

I will give drag and drop a go. Just worried about stuff getting corrupted really.

Thanks!

File permissions went all over the shop due to me not really doing everything correctly, its fixed now tho.

Again, if your going long standing mac? Then all you need when you move computers is to drag and drop your username home folder and everything from computer settings to music and data is all there on the new one. It shouldn't be strewn all over OS X unlike it can be in Windows.

Trust me, separate partitions for data and apps isn't worth it. My setup is this on my Mac Pro:

300Gb Veloci, 150Gb OS X, rest Windows 7
1Tb WD: User home folder (IE your name folder with Music, Photo folder etc)
1Tb WD: Time Machine

Reason for having the home folder on a separate disk is because its too big for the Veloci

On Windows you don't really have this single folder to drag and drop to move to one machine to the next, but here you do.

Up to you but IMO not worth it

 

[Mundu]

This is interesting because after buytin my first latop, which incidentally is a mac, I've decided to finally organise my files.

At the moment everything is all over the shop on my windows PC. I have a lossless music collection as well as my portable collection, which eats up space. My documents are on the same har drive as the OS.

I was thinking a hard drive for music and one for documents would be perfect. Just making sure everything on my mac was backed up on the hard drive at home and that that was backed up to another drive in another location. I'd have to get around to doin the same for my music but can't afford it at the moment, although the thought of loosing my music makes me want to weep.

I'd also have to make a image for my windows rig and mac. Could use Time Machine but but I'm not sure how it would work in conjunction with my windows desktop.

 

[FreeStream]

Snip

Keep files and portable music on the laptop HD in the user folder
Lossless collection on USB HD

Timemachine backup of those two, windows image over network? I've never imaged windows before so no idea how that works.

But time machine will co-exist with anything you put on that HD as long as it has enough space.