Help moving iPad from old PC to new iMac

[INGunGuy]

Hello everyone,

My search-fu seems to be broken and I cant seem to find some good info on this. Ok, my issue is this, I synced my iPad to my old Windows XP PC and now I have purchased a new iPad and want to sync my iPad to my new iMac, but when I go to do this it says I must erase all the data off of my iPad before I can sync it. I have loads of data that I have put onto my iPad from music that I have purchased from iTunes to pictures and videos that I have put on the ipad using my Camera connection kit. Can someone point me in the right direction.

Thanks,

INGunGuy

 

[freebirdforever]

backup your Ipad on your windows PC, find it in the itunes folder, and transfer it via flash drive or external HDD to your new Mac. That is what I did on my clients and it worked fine for me.

 

[INGunGuy]

OK, I have done the backup, but I cant seem to find where iTunes does its backup to. I am in C:|Documents and Settings\<myusername>\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes The problem is that directory is only around 600 megs in size and my 16gb is almost full. So it cant have all my data stored in it.

INGunGuy

 

[Tinman]

I think you first want to make sure you have transferred new purchases from your iPad to your new iMac.

Then share the itunes library from your XP box and connect to it on iMac. Then you can copy all of the apps you have on the XP machine over to the iMac. Simply restoring your iPad from a backup won't do this.

If you like you can copy everything from your XP's iTunes library to the new Mac. I would NOT follow the instructions for moving an itunes library on Apple's site. The file locations are a bit different on the mac and copying via itunes sharing seems to work better and is less problematic.

If all of the music, video, photos, apps, etc are in your new Mac's itunes you can let it erase and resync too. I preferred that to restoring from a backup from my Windows machine. Did not lose a thing.


Michael

 

[INGunGuy]

Honestly I am not really worried about much that is on the iPad. The only things on the iPad I am concerned about are the apps that I have actually purchased and the photos and movies that I put on my iPad from the camera connector, and the music I downloaded from iTunes. And from what I have read, if I loose the music I downloaded, I HAVE to PURCHASE it again because it is a single time to download.

INGunGuy

 

[freebirdforever]

apps that you purchase can be redownloaded. And perhaps you should look at a program that "rips" things off of your ipad like movies and photos to the mac directly.

 

[Tinman]

Honestly I am not really worried about much that is on the iPad. The only things on the iPad I am concerned about are the apps that I have actually purchased and the photos and movies that I put on my iPad from the camera connector, and the music I downloaded from iTunes. And from what I have read, if I loose the music I downloaded, I HAVE to PURCHASE it again because it is a single time to download.

INGunGuy

You can transfer purchases that are on your iPad to your new iMac very easily... music, apps, books, ringtones... you don't really need to re-download anything. And with iTunes "click buy then find out if it knows you own it" approach to redownloading already purchased apps I personally would avoid that method.

Anything you bought on your iPad that is not already in iTunes on the Windows machine can be brought into iTunes via File-->Transfer Purchases (when iPad is connected of course).

With everything in iTunes on the PC it is VERY easy to get it on the mac using iTunes' built-in Home Sharing feature.

I just did this and it worked like a charm.

Once you have everything in iTunes on the Mac it is safe to let it sync apps, music, etc. It will still be there, only now synced from the Mac instead of Windows.

Be sure to authorize iTunes for the new mac, and when all done de-authorize the PC if you won't be using it anymore.




Michael

 

[peled]

OK, I have done the backup, but I cant seem to find where iTunes does its backup to. I am in C:|Documents and Settings\<myusername>\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes The problem is that directory is only around 600 megs in size and my 16gb is almost full. So it cant have all my data stored in it.

INGunGuy

I think you are looking at the wrong place .
You should look for :
C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\My Documents\My Music\iTune.
At leatst in my case that is where I have my 2 Gig of the Application stored.
I never sync the Books and Music