Mac migration

Today I started converting and migrating files from our iMac G4 to my new PC. Our Mac has been collecting dust for the past couple of weeks since I made the PC my primary home computer.

The first step was to get the PC and Mac to network together. I have a wireless hub with Ethernet so establishing a basic network connection was straightforward, the two devices could ping each other right away. I tried enabling Windows Sharing and FTP Sharing on the iMac, and neither worked. I put the devices on the same workgroup, also nothing. I found a note that suggesting that resetting the user passwords might help, but no go. Finally enabled Remote Login on the iMac, and used WinSCP to connect via SSH. That worked.

Once I was able to move files, I started the process of converting them. Many of the files were in AppleWorks format and had to be converted to a format readable by OpenOffice before I could move them over. I converted all the text files to RTF and spreadsheet files to Excel format. I also had several old AppleWorks database files that I wasn't able to convert. I didn't find a free tool to solve that problem.

Next I had to get my music on the PC. I have a Mac-formatted iPod so tools like iPodCopy and iPod2Computer couldn't recognize the device. I had to copy the music files from the Mac over the network via WinSCP. It took a while.

Once I got my music files on the PC, I installed iTunes and authorized the PC at the iTunes Music Store. Next I had to restore the iPod and reformat it for the Windows version of iTunes.

The reformat wiped my Contacts from the iPod, but a while back I had imported them into the Thunderbird address book on the PC. But how to get them from Thunderbird to the iPod? I found MozPod, a Thunderbird extension that solves this problem. When I first downloaded MozPod, it tried to install itself as a FireFox extension, which failed since it isn't designed for FireFox. Once I got it to install into Thunderbird, it worked perfectly.

Overall the migration took about 14 hours, most of that time spent cleaning up, converting, and copying the last ten years of my family's digital life. I'll find out in the next few days how much of the data actually made it over successfully.