Ask MacMove

MacMove reader **Isaac** asks:

>My mother just inherited my brother's old iBook, with a new hard drive. How do we go about moving all of her music from her desktop PC to the iBook?

That's a good question - one that lots of people ask. So, we're going to tackle it right here on the site!

##Basic Outline##
The process is pretty simple. In basic terms, all you are going to do is copy the folder containing the music from the PC to the iBook. Now, there are some details to take care of, but the process itself is straight-forward.

Let's deal with the actual transfer first. A music library is nothing more than a folder containing sub-folders which hold music. Now, there are probably a lot of songs in your Mom's music library, so we're talking about *a lot* of data; probably gigabytes. So, we're not going to just email these files or put them on a CD. But, not to worry: there are two different methods to move this much data between computers, and both are pretty simple.

##Options##
One choice is to create a network between the two machines (if you don't have one already) then use file-sharing to move the music. Another is to use an external hard drive as a temporary home for the music files.

The first solution takes some doing. It's not hard, but it is complex. Luckily, Apple has a walk-through available [here](http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107083). So, that's that. The other option, an external hard drive (which Isaac ended up using) is much simpler. Just place all of the music onto the drive from the PC then copy it onto the Mac (remembering to then remove it from the external drive once you verify it's all working on the iBook). You see, Macs can use the same external hard drives that Windows PCs do, so that's a piece of cake.

##Get Organized##
Now, there is a setting in iTunes that will make this all easier: In the Advanced tab of the iTunes Preferences window, select the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" checkbox. This is probably already checked, but make sure. This setting will automatically place all of the music files on your computer (Mac or PC) into a formal structure of folders and sub-folders for you. I can't think of any reason why this would be a bad thing, and it makes the migration of your music much easier.

##The Move##
Once you have verified that your music is all in once place, the transfer is a snap. Where is that "one place?" Well, your iTunes Music folder is a folder named "iTunes Music" in ~/Music/iTunes/ (where the tilde "~" represents your home directory). In Windows, the default location is: \Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes. Simply copy that folder ("iTunes Music") onto your external drive and then onto the second machine from there. Then, on the new computer, place it exactly where it used to be, so iTunes will know where to find it.

NOTE: if there is more than one folder with the name "iTunes Music" in that magic spot, your computer will balk. Like the Highlander, there can be only one... iTunes Music folder. So, before you blindly copy your music onto the second machine, make sure you have moved or renamed the folder that you're replacing. If you don't, it will be erased to make room for the new one.

Everything should be fine, as long as you haven't launched iTunes on the second machine anytime during the transfer. Once the files are in place, go ahead an launch the program; it should see the new iTunes Music folder at startup and –presto!– you've got your old music library on your new machine.

As always, if anything here is unclear or you run into problems, let us know, via email or in a comment. Good luck!

Does it qualify as an "Ask MM" post if I'm asking myself the question?

As I explained back in [this post](http://www.macmove.com/mm/archives/apple/125) about iLife, I recently took an overseas trip with my students and came home with about 1,100 pictures from our 12 days together. Thanks to iPhoto's ease-of-use, I've been able to organize those pictures into albums –27 in total– and use them for various web posts, presentations and other displays.

Now some of the students and the other chaperone would like me to give them the photos themselves on CD so that they can look at them, print them, etc. The difficulty is that, while iPhoto has a "Burn to CD" option, it creates an iPhoto-specific folder structure. That's great for backing up pictures to CD, but if you want to share photos with someone who doesn't use iPhoto, that's not going to work, because what you get is a confusing nest of folders-within-folders with your photos buried at the bottom.

What I want is to export multiple albums from iPhoto and end up with a folder containing a group of other folders, one for each album. And, in a perfect world, each photo will be named with the name of the Album and a serial number, so the "Gardens" folder will contain photos called something like "Garden_001.JPG", "Garden_002.JPG" and so on.

Turns out that iPhoto can't do this on its own and I couldn't find a plug-in designed to help. But, fear not, I found a work-around that isn't too shabby.

The process breaks down as follows:

1. If you haven't already, organize your images into albums. If you're using iPhoto v5 or later, you can place those albums into folders, making it *much* easier to manage your large collection.

2. Once all of your photos are organized, take a minute to be sure that you've included everything you want to and culled out the garbage. You're going to be producing an exported version of your collection and, once you do, you can't easily add to it or change it without re-exporting the entire thing. So double-check.

3. You will need to rename the photos in each album to reflect the album name.

4. Once that is done, you simply export the contents of all of the albums to a single folder and, using the new album names, organize them as you see fit.

It's a pretty simple process.

Let's take a closer look at Step #3.

Choose an album in iPhoto and select all of the images in it, using command-A or by choosing Select All from the Edit Menu. Then, choose Batch Change... from the Photos Menu (as above) and set the options as shown in the screenshot on the right. This will reset the title of each picture in the album to whatever you set in the dialog sheet. So, since I made a typo in the example image, all of the photos in this album will be renamed to "Gardena" and each will have a number after the name, like "Gardena 1", "Gardena 2", etc.

Once you've completed Step 3 for each album (which doesn't take as long as you think it will), you can simple select all of the albums and export the photos in them to a folder somewhere on your hard drive using the Export... option in the Share Menu. I would recommend exporting them as JPEG images just in case you're going to share them with a Windows user.

What you're left with is a single folder containing all of your images, but they are labelled, by album and numbered within each album. All you need to do now is view them in the Finder and sort by filename... then you can easily move them into folders or simply burn them to disk as-is. Either way, they will be *much* easier for whomever you're sharing them with to deal with.

It's not a perfect solution, but you're much better off then exporting each album individually.

On a message board I frequent, a user named Doug asked me the following question:

>How do I get iCal to quit bugging my wife?

>I've got a PDA that has 18 bazillion appointment reminders in it for me during my work day. I sync it to iSync, and then I sort all the events into various calendars, so there is one particular calendar that contains all my work crap. I can easily hide that calendar, but the alarms still go off all day long, so my wife sees things like "Meeting with Bob", "Status report due" etc.

>I'd like to tell iCal not to alert me about anything in the Doug Work calendar, but keep the alerts on so that my PDA still warns me.

This is a good question for a number of reasons. First, it will allow me to talk about a neat piece of OS X technology that every user should know about. Second, the question comes from a user who obviously wants to *use* his Mac and is frustrated by what seems like a silly limitation. I like that the ease-of-use his Mac has given him leads him to believe that there must be a solution... He's right of course: there is.

Finally, this is a great question because it allows me to remind everyone of you that you should be recommending MacMove to all of your Mac-using friends. There is something here for everyone!

Now, Doug's answer: There is, in fact, a great way to allow both Doug and his wife to use their Mac together in peace without treading on each others' files or being bothered by each others' calendars. It's a core piece of OS X and has been around since Panther (the version of the OS previous to Tiger, the current version). It will solve this problem, as well as others that Doug may not even know he has, plus it's just plain fun to use.

I'm referring, of course, to [Fast User Switching](http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/fastuserswitching/). You see, OS X is a multi-user OS. This means that every single person who interacts with the computer can (and *should*) have their own User Account. You add Accounts in the Accounts pane of the System Preferences. Each new user gets his or her own login name and password, user image and, in essence, their own computer, *inside your Mac.*

Remember that, on a Mac, you don't just turn your computer on; you log in, too. Once you do that, you've created a "login session" for yourself. And OS X can handle more than one login session at a time. So, if Billy is using the Mac to burn a mix-CD for his girlfriend and you just want to check your email, you can log in to your own session, without disturbing Billy's, quickly check your mail, then log back out.

Fast User Switching is the magic that lets you get in and out without disturbing other users. Once Billy's login session is pushed to the background, he can no longer interact with the computer. But, when he gets his grubby hands back on the keyboard and mouse, all will be just as he left it; his applications will still be running, his web pages will still be open and he will be able to pick right back up where he left off.

Plus, applications with settings particular to a single user, like Mail accounts or Doug's calendar appointments in iCal, will, in essence, run as separate copies for each user. That's Doug's solution: once he and his wife have different User Accounts, she will never again be bothered by his iCal reminders. Plus, she can have her own Bookmarks in Safari, email accounts in Mail... she can even choose to arrange the toolbars in Microsoft Word just the way she wants and the computer will remember her preferences for her and Doug's for Doug.

You access the different accounts from the Fast User Switching Menu (or, as I've said [before](http://www.macmove.com/mm/archives/macmove-recommends/mm-recs-winswitch) by using the remarkable utility [WinSwitch](http://wincent.com/a/products/winswitch/) instead). Once you do, OS X gives you the treat of a totally-cool rotating-cube transition to move from one login session to another.

There are [other reasons](http://www.macmove.com/mm/archives/ask-macmove/ask-mm-to-administer-or-not-to-administer) why Fast User Switching is a good thing to know about, too. So, give it a try... you'll like it.

UPDATE: Here's a postscript: my pal Doug responds:

>Holy crap, this fast-user switching rocks. It's nearly instant, and works flawlessly. I love it, it's about 80 gazillion times cleaner than the Windows version.

'Nuff said.

I thought I was done with this one, but it's back.

Thanks to some lousy product design at Adobe, if you install Acrobat Pro on a Mac OS X system with Office installed, you will get a stupid Adobe PDF toolbar in Word and Excel. (It might show up elsewhere, but I'm not sure. Two applications is enough stupid for me.) It's stupid because there is nothing that this toolbar does that you can't do yourself using OS X's built-in Print to PDF functionality.

So, if your screen real-estate is being wasted by this crap, feel free to kill it. I hunted online and found at least two web pages with instructions.

I found [this](http://www.breakingwindows.com/new/2004/08/adobe_acrobat_p.php) and [this](http://www.betalogue.com/2004/04/27/microsoft-office-x-and-adobe-acrobat-6-getting-rid-of-these-pesky-acrobat-toolbars/) which you can read. Or you can just do what I did.

In the Finder, open the Microsoft Office folder in your Applications folder. In there, open the Office folder and, in *there*, open the Startup folder. There should be three folders inside, once for each Office application that has been infected. Create a fourth folder, called something fun like "Adobe Crap" then copy the other folders into it. That's all. You're done.

You're welcome. ;)

MacMove reader (and former student of mine) Ethan Helfand asks:

>I recently purchased an external hard-drive, a 160gb by Lacie. Is there a way to backup my HD without using their software? Because I find their software hard to use and unreliable, but when I tried to directly copy (with drag and drop) to the external HD, it worked fine.

>My second question is this: Do I need to partition the disk at all (and if so, what exactly do I need to do, in terms of how many partitions). And secondly, is it possible to make it bootable, meaning if my internal HD fails, can I run my computer directly from my external until I get the other fixed- if so then do I have to install my OS onto the external?

Pretty sneaky, Ethan. Your “question” is actually five questions! Don’t worry, though, I won’t charge extra for the answer. :) Here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to Mike Bombich’s [website](http://www.bombich.com) and download the excellent, free utility "Carbon Copy Cloner." It's a great app which can create perfect, bootable copies of a disk.

2. Run Disk Utility, which is located in your Applications foder, in the Utilities sub-folder. You are going to use it to partition your external drive. **Warning**: Partitioning a drive erases all of the files on that drive. Before you do this, make sure you have copied any files you want to keep onto some other drive or burned them to a CD or DVD. A "partition" is a piece of the drive and, when you set up more than one of them, the Mac OS sees each as a separate hard drive. Create one, called "Backup" that is the same size as your internal drive, then create another one, called something else, with the rest of the space. On my external drive, I have a 60 GB Backup partition and a 100 GB partition called "Storage."

3. Run CCC and read the Preferences options carefully. You want to set it to run a complete clone of your internal drive and make sure the "Make Bootable" checkbox is checked. Once these options are set, you can go ahead and click the “Clone” button. You will need to enter your admin password to start the cloning. The process will take a while (hours, maybe) but, when it's finished, you will have what you want: an exact, bootable replacement of your drive. When I had to send my PowerBook back to Apple for a repair, I booted the school's iBook from my external drive and never knew I was on a different machine. When the PowerBook came back from Apple, I simply repeated the process to restore data from the external to the internal drive.

4. If you need to run a Mac from an external hard drive, you boot the machine by plugging in that external drive, turning it on and then starting up the machine with the option key held down. You will see an poorly designed menu of all the available drives. Select the external and you will be good to go.