Hello Alan and Bob,

Thank you very much for your quick replies.

On May 28, 2011, at 6:22 PM, Bob Stern wrote:

> Kino-san uses Virtual Box, which is free.  You might try it before  
> purchasing Parallels or WMware Fusion.
> http://www.virtualbox.org/

This seems very interesting. I will study it closely.

>
> A helpful reference for $15 is Take Control of Running Windows on a  
> Mac:
> http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/windows-on-mac
>
> VMware paid the author to offer the Fusion book for free:
> http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/vmware-fusion-3

Thank you also for these references.

> Your new Mac will include the program "Migration Assistant" in / 
> Applications/Utilities/.  It is perfect for migrating software and  
> user accounts.
>
> For pure data, you can simply do a Finder copy.  However, aliases  
> will be broken.
>
> If you defined multiple user accounts on your PowerMac G4, you  
> should define the same user accounts *in the same order*.  This  
> will minimize problems with migrated files being assigned to the  
> wrong owner on the new Mac.

Yes, I will take care of this.

>> I have a PowerMac G5 at my office, and I have a Time Machine drive  
>> which backs up that machine. Can I use this Time Machine drive to  
>> migrate my data and applications to the new iMac?
>
> If the hard drive of your PowerMac G4 is not corrupted, perhaps you  
> can borrow an empty external drive enclosure in which you can mount  
> the hard drive to connect it to your new Mac.   If you cannot  
> borrow an enclosure, you can purchase a Wiebe ComboDock or Newer  
> Universal Drive Adapter to connect the bare hard drive to your new  
> Mac:
> http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3NVSPATA/
> http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U2NV2SPATA/

It seems my hard drive of PowerMac G4 is somehow broken, and I will  
not use it for the migration. Anyway, I made new data since one  
month, on my iBook (which is my personal machine), and on my office  
PowerMac G5, running OS 10.5. The main data are synchronized in these  
two machines (using an external portable drive).

>
> Do you mean Time Capsule rather than Time Machine?  If you must  
> make an intermediate copy to your Time Capsule or Time Machine  
> drive, make that copy to a "sparse drive image" (not "sparse bundle  
> drive image") on the TC or TM drive.  You can use Disk Utility to  
> create the drive image.  Choose Format popup = Mac OS Extended  
> Journaled.

I mean, my external portable drive has a partition, which is used as  
a backup-Time Machine drive for my PowerMac G5, running 10.5. Since  
10.5 is closer to 10.6, than 10.4, I think it would be probably  
better to use this PowerMac G5 as the source of migration. But the  
new iMac, as well as the PowerMac G5, are desktop machine, which  
cannot be moved easily. This is why I thought that perhaps the  
partition of my portable drive used as the backup-Time Machine drive  
could be used as a source for the migration. This is the reason of my  
question. -- I know that it is possible to run Migration Assistant  
between two machines, but I am asking myself if it is possible to use  
a backup-Time Machine drive as the source of migration, using  
Migration Assistant...

Thank you again for all you ideas.

Best regard,

Nobumi Iyanaga
Tokyo,
Japan