Migration question

[Black]

Need to help a friend migrate from 10.4.11 on a MDD G4 to 10.6.x on a new iMac.

When I did my own migration (same mac to a 2006 Leopard iMac) I tried target disk mode, but was screwed because my everyday/startup drive on teh G4 was no longer in the master position on the main bus and it wasn't seen. I believe I tried ethernet but couldn't get it to work, and ultimately used USB/external drive (painfully slow, obviously). Anyone done a similar operation recently?
Has Migration Assistant gotten better?
Thx . . .

[kj4btkljv]

How are his drives configured on the MDD G4 - is there more than 1 in there?

If so, that's where Migration Assistant, and more than that, FireWire Target Disk Mode, fall flat on their face.

Jeff

[space-time]

I migrated several times, and every single times the Assistant worked great for me.

I also migrated from Romania to US (legally) and I might migrate again at some point.

[Black]

kj4btkljv wrote:
How are his drives configured on the MDD G4 - is there more than 1 in there?

If so, that's where Migration Assistant, and more than that, FireWire Target Disk Mode, fall flat on their face.

Jeff

Can't remember exactly. There's the stock 80 GB in its normal place and I think a 500 GB in some other position. I can't remember whether the 80 GB is still the startup drive, but even if it is there's a ton of stuff on the 500 that needs to come over too. Some idiot set her up with the 500 and partitioned it into 5 (she never figured out what to do with that.)

I think this is going to be messy no matter how you play it. I've been wanting to get her back to one volume and one backup for a long time.

[Doc]

It's not that big a deal if you have to remove the drives and connect via USB 2.0 adapter or enclosure to run the MA.

USB 2.0 is plenty fast enough for the job.

[Black]

Doc wrote:
It's not that big a deal if you have to remove the drives and connect via USB 2.0 adapter or enclosure to run the MA.

USB 2.0 is plenty fast enough for the job.

Not if you have to make a trip across town to help with the setup, and are dealing with someone who's unable to solve any problems on their own, and don't want to have to make the trip twice or more.

[Doc]

Black wrote:
[quote=Doc]
It's not that big a deal if you have to remove the drives and connect via USB 2.0 adapter or enclosure to run the MA.

USB 2.0 is plenty fast enough for the job.

Not if you have to make a trip across town to help with the setup, and are dealing with someone who's unable to solve any problems on their own, and don't want to have to make the trip twice or more.
It takes about a minute to yank a drive from a MDD. Bring a pocket-screwdriver for the one screw you may have to remove for each drive.

Get a USB 2.0 adapter cable and play with it before you go over there so that you are confident about how to use it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLis...Submit=ENE&Description=usb%20sata%20pata%20adapter%20cable&bop=And&Pagesize=100

Best to get an adapter that does full-size PATA, 2.5-inch PATA and SATA so that it might be of some use in the future. (This is one of those toys that everyone should have laying around for troubleshooting and data-migration.)

[Black]

Doc wrote:
[quote=Black]
[quote=Doc]
It's not that big a deal if you have to remove the drives and connect via USB 2.0 adapter or enclosure to run the MA.

USB 2.0 is plenty fast enough for the job.

Not if you have to make a trip across town to help with the setup, and are dealing with someone who's unable to solve any problems on their own, and don't want to have to make the trip twice or more.
It takes about a minute to yank a drive from a MDD. Bring a pocket-screwdriver for the one screw you may have to remove for each drive.

Get a USB 2.0 adapter cable and play with it before you go over there so that you are confident about how to use it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLis...Submit=ENE&Description=usb%20sata%20pata%20adapter%20cable&bop=And&Pagesize=100

Best to get an adapter that does full-size PATA, 2.5-inch PATA and SATA so that it might be of some use in the future. (This is one of those toys that everyone should have laying around for troubleshooting and data-migration.)

And then I sit there at her house and wait 6 hours for the transfer?
Anyways, thanks for the tip- I'll bring my bare hard drive harness as a last resort. I know how to extract a hard drive from a MDD-- as I wrote I had my own (had 4 drives in it).

[Doc]

Bring a FW400/800 cable. The new iMacs only have FW 800.

Target mode could still work.

...

> And then I sit there at her house and wait 6 hours for the transfer?

Maybe.

'Depends how much data and how slow those old drives are. Usually, when I help friends with this kind of stuff, I start the migration going and then we go out to lunch/dinner/beers while the computer chugs along on its own.

If I know it's gonna take awhile, I arrange to take the machines home or have the friend drop them off to do it overnight or over a weekend at my leisure.

...

On a new iMac with USB 2.0 using a USB adapter (or a drive enclosure with USB 2.0 or FW), the bottleneck is going to come from the speed of the old drive(s), not the USB bus.

Even the original slow IDE drive should be able to read at 14MB/s over USB. That's maybe 50GB per hour as a baseline. So, worst case scenario is 1:15 for the 80GB startup drive with the most important stuff on it.

The 500GB will probably approach 24MB/s over USB 2.0. (Best guess.) If it's full then yes, it could take 5-6 hours.

Assuming that the wacky partitioning doesn't mean you've got to comb through the drive looking for the "good" files then you could probably start copying from the 500GB and go home. Let your friend give you back the drive enclosure or USB adapter later.

[Speedy]

Posting pics would help us decide the merits of doing a slow transfer.

> And then I sit there at her house and wait 6 hours for the transfer?