How to migrate/transfer user data when upgrading Mac OS?
My friend needs to upgrade her Mac (with a new OS, I believe) and she is worried about losing her data during the upgrade. Apparently a hard drive reformat is required.
I am not familiar with Macs, so what is the best strategy for saving and migrating her valuable data (like business-related documents: where would they be located?) I recommended having her current hard drive swapped out with a new one to be absolutely safe: she could just have it swapped back in if anything goes wrong. However, this is not exactly convenient for migrating that data to the new hard drive.
I could not get too much info over the phone, as my friend is very unfamiliar with computers. This is what I could get:
- Mac laptop bought within the last two years.
- The OS is too old to run some programs she needs.
- To upgrade the OS, a hard drive reformat is required.
- The data she is most concerned about is from an application called Scrivener.
edit: Will an Apple Mac store provide this type of data backup and migration if they do the upgrade?
update: The name of the application with important data is called Scrivener. Also the Apple store won't do a data migration (in Korea, anyways)
The Apple store in COEX [Seoul, Korea] said they can't back up my files temporarily, it's not even an official Apple store.
update: more info about laptop
- Hardware: Macbook
- Current OS: 10.4.11 Tiger
- Required OS: 10.6 Leopard
- "I guess I missed the 10.5 upgrade, since I'm skipping it they have to reformat everything. "