Data migration: Get your emails and iTunes library back
Finally I have all the time I need to re-install all my essential applications and migrate my data.
As I wrote here, a very nice employee of Cyberport helped me backing up my data from my broken MacBook before sending it in for repairs. Thank godness he did, because the Mac was returned to me with a new logic board and a new hard drive.
Migrating Mails
This was on top of my priority list. Since I didn’t have a clone of my system, I could not use the migration assistant and had to do it manually. And it worked like a charm.
IMPORTANT: Best do not start Mail before you have executed all these steps. Just to be on the safe side.
All you have to do is the following:
- Go to your backup and locate the Mail folders here: user/Library/Mail and possibly user/Library/Mail Downloads
- Copy those two folders as they are to the exact same location on your new system – Note: If you haven’t started Mail yet, these folders will not yet exist on your new system, so don’t panic. Another note: All this is done assuming you are using the same user name as on your old system!
- Now you have to get the preference file for Mail: user/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist and copy it as well to the new system
- Start Mail and voila – everything is there! In a matter of seconds! Love ya, Apple!
Migrating iTunes
If you are like me and have a huge iTunes library where you have tons of playlists and all your songs are carefully rated you might want to keep these settings. I, for example, sort my songs by the date I added them and re-adding the songs just renders that setting completely useless.
- Go to your backup and locate your iTunes library files, usually user/Music/iTunes
- Copy the entire folder to your new system, same location.
- Fire up iTunes
- If you have had some special settings (for example, my music is on an external hard drive and I want iTunes to manage it and copy it there when new songs are added), go to the Preferences and edit the settings in the Advanced-Tab.
- iTunes might now update your library. Depending on the size of your library this might take a while.
- All set.
I wish everything was as easy as this.
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