Moving from G4 to G5 and upgrading to Tiger

[Mumrik]

Until now my main working machine has been a PowerMac G4 with MacOS X 10.3.x. I have now got the chance to upgrade to a PowerMac G5 (2*1.8 GHz, not the just released model). I would like to take this opportunity to "kill two birds with one stone", transfering all my stuff from the G4 to the G5 and installing Tiger on the G5. I presume SuperDuper! can help me making this a smooth transition. But how?

Should I upgrade to Tiger on the G4, then make a full backup of it to an external FW drive using SuperDuper and then "restore" that backup onto the G5? I fear this migh not be a good idea since I believe the Tiger installation for the G5 is different in some respects from the one I would have on the G4 (right?)

So, is there another way which I guess will have to start with Tiger installed on the G5 and then transferring the non-Tiger stuff from the G4 to the G5. How would I best do this? What's the risk of it being incomplete and requiring a lot of "tweaking"?

Thanks for advice on this operation which I guess is not all that uncommon.

[dnanian]

Hi, Mumrik.

As much as I'd like to tell you to use SuperDuper! for this, I think you'd be better off simply installing Tiger on the G5 and using its built-in Migration Assistant to transfer the data from the old machine.

Basically, you'll set your G4 into FireWire Target Disk mode, connect the two machines with a FireWire cable, and the Assistant will do the rest.

If that doesn't work well for you, we can talk about how to do it with SuperDuper! -- but this'll save you $20, and I think you'll be pleased with the result.

[Mumrik]

Thanks a lot for prompt and clear advice pointing me to the Migration Asssitant which I had otherwise probably overlooked. I'm sure the US$ 20 investment I have already made in SuperDuper is far from wasted since I'm going to use it for Backup and Security Clones. Thanks for a very useful program and for 1:st class support!

Best regards / Mumrik

[dnanian]

My pleasure, Mumrik!