Migration Assistant can't find my hard drive - can you help?

Hi, I've just bought a new MacBook Pro (Lion) as my 6 year old iMac (Snow Leopard) has died. I wanted to restore my data from my iMac, via my Time Machine back-ups which are stored on a WD MyPassport. When using the migration assistant, I've followed the instructions, but the assistant refuses to see the hard drive and all I get is "Looking for Other Computers" and a spinning wheel. I've done this before when a hard drive went south and it worked really well, but this is not good at all.
Any advice gratefully received. Thanks.

John Brandt wrote:
Setup Assistant never sees the source drive:
Does it show anything at all? The disk should have a yellow icon.
Is the main issue that I am trying to migrate from too old of an OS X version (e.g. 10.4.11)?
I don't think so. I don't have a Mac running Tiger, so couldn't test it, but many folks have done it without a problem.
Have you run Verify Disk or Repair Disk on the old Mac and/or the backups? If there's a directory problem, it may boot the old Mac, but the new one may not recognize it.
If all else fails, you may have to do it manually. Try starting the new Mac normally, logging on as a normal (Admin) user, connect the clone to it, and see if it appears. If so, you should be able to manually copy from the backups via drag & drop.
If so, you'll have to be careful of two things:
User accounts: If the old Mac only has a single account, the first account you set up on the new one should have permission to copy from the backups. If not, either set up a second account on the new Mac and try it, or use Get Info on the backups to grant the user account on the new Mac permission to read the data on the backups.
Special files/folders like Mail and Address Book / Contacts. You can't just copy the files since the structure has changed, but you may be able to import the old mailboxes via File > Import Mailboxes from the Mail menu on the new Mac. Similarly, you may be able to use File > Import in Contacts on the new Mac to import contacts.
(Note: it's late here, and I'll be going to bed soon, but will be back tomorrow.)

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GeorgeRollo wrote:
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franz1 wrote:
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