I can tell you what I would do. I have used Migration Assistant successfully many times but as I have not attempted a migration where there were multiple partitions involved I make no guarantees it will or will not work.
  1. Before starting the new Mac for the first time...
  2. Run Disk Utiltity or better yet DiskWarrior, Drive Genius, TechTool Pro against each of the volumes on her old Mac to be sure everything is healthy before initiating any trannsfer of data.
  3. Connect the two Macs back to back with a six pin to six pin firewire cable, then boot the old Mac into firewire target disk mode then boot the new Mac
  4. During the setup of the new Mac you will be prompted to migrate data from another Mac. -- take the option to do so and migrate everything you can.
  5. Once Migration Assistant has finished doing its thing, the new Mac should have all the user data and applications that were on the boot volume of the old Mac. I do not believe it will transfer any data from the other four volumes.
  6. Manually transfer the data from the other four volumes to the new Mac. I have no idea what is on the other four volumes, but as a general rule any data should be placed in your wife's user folder on the new Mac.
  7. Re-install any applications that were on the other four volumes. This hopefully will eliminate any potantial conflicts that might arise. While re-installing, be sure you have the latest update of the applications. versionTracker and MacUpdate can help you identify the latest versions. NOTE: out of date utilities can actually cause damage to your wife's new system.

Last edited by joemikeb; 09/01/09 05:44 PM. Reason: clarify
If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

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