How to Copy Music from Old Mac to new Mac
I am not familiar with Apple products except my iphone. A client wants me to copy music from her old Mac to her New Mac. I have a USB Seagate external drive of 5TB but it is currently formatted with NTFS. I have a wireless network and ethernet cables. I have done some research and I think the best way would over a network, but I am not sure. I would like some fool proof instructions. Thanks,
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You can install OS X Fuse or the free Paragon NTFS for Seagate and you'll be able to write your external drive. You might as well do it for both your Macs and have a backup copy of the music.
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/index.html
https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/releases
The newer OS X can actually write to NTFS, but you'll have to enable it. OS X just mounts the NTFS drive as read only, but it's "experimental" I would just Paragon for you seagate drive. I've been using OS X Fuse for years, since I read and write multiple types of disks.
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/index.html
https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/releases
The newer OS X can actually write to NTFS, but you'll have to enable it. OS X just mounts the NTFS drive as read only, but it's "experimental" I would just Paragon for you seagate drive. I've been using OS X Fuse for years, since I read and write multiple types of disks.
ASKER
These answers have led to a couple of questions. One, I have a crossover cable I can use to connect both Macs together, which I assume would be the fastest. How do I then communicate from one Mac to the other? Two, if the new Mac has some music already on it, how to I make the copy from the old while safeguarding the music files on the new? Thanks.
> How do I then communicate from one Mac to the other?
I guess you are currently using DHCP for both Macs. option 1 is to manually assign an IP to each Macs. the IPs can't be the same but must be in the same subnet. option 2 is to wait a while for an automatic private IP on each Mac, then go to Preferences > Network to get the IP.
as mentioned above, from one Mac right-click the Finder icon and choose to connect a server, type in the IP of the other Mac, if the other Mac is not fully blocked by its firewall you should be able to see a dialogue box asking you for credential. once authenticated, you will see the shared folders of the Mac.
then l guess you know what to do from here.
> if the new Mac has some music already on it...
all new and old songs will be coexisting in the library. you won't miss one though you might need to manually delete he duplicates if any.
I guess you are currently using DHCP for both Macs. option 1 is to manually assign an IP to each Macs. the IPs can't be the same but must be in the same subnet. option 2 is to wait a while for an automatic private IP on each Mac, then go to Preferences > Network to get the IP.
as mentioned above, from one Mac right-click the Finder icon and choose to connect a server, type in the IP of the other Mac, if the other Mac is not fully blocked by its firewall you should be able to see a dialogue box asking you for credential. once authenticated, you will see the shared folders of the Mac.
then l guess you know what to do from here.
> if the new Mac has some music already on it...
all new and old songs will be coexisting in the library. you won't miss one though you might need to manually delete he duplicates if any.
as for copying the music from one Mac to the other, open iTunes on the source Mac, select all songs and drag them to a Shared folder in Finder. from the other Mac, locate the source Mac and its shared folder containing the exported music files and folders, select all of them and drag them into the iTunes on the target Mac.