Migration assistant fails and eats storage

Mac Book Pro 10.10
While utilizing Migration Assistant between two OS 10.10 machines (old and new) via thunderbolt connection the migration stalled with 1 min to go. I turned off both computers an rebooted them seprately. The new computer displayed the account I had created while in migration assistant and logged in with the appropriate credentials however no files were displaying. I logged out and signed into another admin account I had created before the migration and deleted the account specifically check the box to erase the home folder of that user. At this point I had already noticed that it had eaten 300+ GB of my storage and hoped that deleting the account would give me back the storage. However after restarting several times, running disk utility and emptying the trash, there still seems to be a phantom 300 GB of storage somewhere on the machine un accessible by me. Any insights would be helpful. I would like to get my storage capacity back without having to wipe the entire HD.
Thanks!

So I Found the issue.... It was stored in Private/var/zz/cleanup at startup
I found the profile name (home file) in the cleanup at startup folder and deleted it. System is working and now I have my disk space back.
I followed the directions that Linc Davis suggested in this post: How do I resolve 43+ GB of missing storage on the Macintosh HD?

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HT4796 Migration assistant failed after 90% of the way; where are the files now and how do I get rid of them?

Migration assistant failed after 90% of the way; where are the files now and how do I get rid of them?

Hello. It looks like I recovered all my keywords attached to photos. What I did:
First I located all photos without keywords using a metadata search.
I found that it seemed to be certain groups of photos that had no keywords. I decided to at least get the main keyword on all of those in a particular group, like Canyonlands.
Once I added one of the keywords, the others all showed up magically! I then went to each group of photos and added the main keyword, and the others came along and attached to the photos.
Don't understand why this occurred or why it got fixed, since it was so random. But, I'm glad to have my keywords restored (I had divided flowers by color, etc. so it was a lot of work!)
Thanks for the discussion and help.

Migration Assistant fails with MacPro6,1

I bought a Mac Pro a few months ago and kept getting kernal panic's after running migration assistant from a MacPro1,1 which I have had for about 8 years. I went back and forth with Apple, and they decided it was defective and sent me a new one which took a while to get through the university bureaucracy. I ran Migration Assistant from a MacPro1,1 running OS 10.7.5, and again got a kernal panic on restarting but was able to do a safe-boot successfully ((previous MacPro even this failed). I updated the OS X software and tried to turn off stuff that might be interfering but still get kernal panic's on restarting sometimes. Also received alerts that a variety of system extensions "were not installed properly". Clearly, the system IS NOT that stable so I erased the hard disk and will do a manual restore app by app so no preferences or systems-related software gets transferred.
This problem is very surprising to me since I have never had problems with Migration Assistant before and we have plenty of macs here. I must have tried a dozen times with the first Mac Pro using either the old mac in firewire mode or using the time-machine backup but nothing worked. I wonder if anyone else has seen this and if the new Mac Pro has an issue in this regard.
On the positive side, Migration Assistant probably moved a bunch of obsolete software/files from the 8-yr old Mac which was migrated from an older Mac (and the older Mac was migrated from a an even earlier Mac). A clean install at this point may be worth doing but a hassle.

Your conclusion that Migration assistant fails is not supported by the evidence you presented. You said you got kernel panics AFTER you restarted -- these are not caused by inherent Vice in Migration Assistant, which appears to have completed successfully.
Kernel panic is not ONE problem, it is one of hundreds to thousands of problems, and if you would like help debugging that, you could post a kernel panic log for readers to help you interpret.
Mac OS X: How to log a kernel panic
If you approach Apple for help with this issue, they will check for machine-check reports, run diagnostics, then send you home to erase your drive and re-Install Mac OS X from scratch (which effectively removes third party add-ons in the process).

Migration Assistant Fails during X.4 to X.5 Upgrade

I'm trying to upgrade from X.4 to X.5.
I did an Archive and Install, and Migration Assistant fails.
It firstly fails with some Address Book backup files.
These are located in: david/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Address Book Backup
With filenames such as: Address Book - 01/02/2008
The error is "File name too long (63)"
I removed the whole folder and tried again, and it failed with 'Invalid Argument'
I ended up restoring X.4 from a disk image.
I then tried installing X.5 on a bootable external FireWire drive with GUID partition map, migrating from the internal hard drive.
This also fails at the same point.
Any suggestions?
Many TIA
David

It would appear that the Address Book backup file was corrupt. The size indicated was around 180MB, rather than around 10MB! The visible file name looked OK.
Ironically, X.5 was able to copy the file to a new location. It complained about file name length, but copied it and reduced the file size to 9MB. Rather a shame that Migration Assistant doesn't use the same copy facilities.
What has this taught me?
1. BACKUP! Create a disc image of the full hard disc. OK, it's said elsewhere, but it really can't be said too often!
2. Set up an Administrator/admin account. One that's essentially not used, but can access all Applications, networks and settings. If I had done this, I could have migrated this account as part of the installation process, and worried about migrating the main User account separately, using Migration Assistant.
However, I now have a new problem!
For some reason, I can't access the wireless network I've been using. I can see the neighbour's network(!), but not my own. I'm using WEP security.
Any ideas?
Many thanks,
David

HT4796 Does anybody know why migration assistant fails in windows vista?

Does anybody know why migration assistant fails in windows vista?

rank2, welcome to the forum,
PS: Is Europe/Germany as location ok? The rules don't mention how location should look like
That's great, thanks.
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Migration Assistant fails after showing 157 KB or 0 KB to transfer

I spent 4 days trying to get OS X Migration Assistant to successfully migrate between two desktop machines, both running Mavericks 10.9.3.
The two machines were connected by an ethernet cable, and all migrations would fail after 16-24 hours, with the progress bar stalling out at "Less than one minute remaining".
Before every failed transfer, Migration Assistant would inaccurately show "157 KB selected" for transfer if the "Computer & Network Settings" option was checked, or "0 KB selected" for transfer if only the "Applications" or "Documents & Data" options were checked.
I finally realized that the migrations were failing because I was opening and clicking through Migration Assistant on both the source and target machines at around the same time.
The eventual solution was to open Migration Assistant on the source machine first, and click through as far as I could until the source machine was actively looking for other machines on the network.
As long as I waited until then to open Migration Assistant on the target machine, it would correctly calculate the size of the files to be transferred and the migration would succeed.
So, the order in which you open Migration Assistant seems to make a big difference: source first, then target.
My problem is solved, but only after several days of hassle, so I wanted to post this in case other people had a similar issue.
(I tried many suggested fixes that did not work, included reinstalling OS X on the target machine, running disk repair and fixing permissions on both source and target, changing file sharing on the source machine to include the whole drive, trying to migrate Applications and Documents & Data separately, turning off wifi before the transfer, etc.)

Thanks for posting this. I was having the same problem. You saved me hours, maybe days, of frustration!

Migration Assistant fails on non-existent file

Here's an interesting one. I made a bootable clone of my harddrive (with SuperDuper) that works like a champ. Bought a new (much larger) hard drive for my Macbook, installed OS X with no problem, got it all updated. Then went to use Migration Assistant to import my user from the clone, and it fails on trying to copy an invisible file (begins with .) that actually doesn't exist (I have Finder set to show hidden files). This causes the whole import to fail and MA says the user can't be created. Is there any way to tell it to skip this "file"? Other suggestions welcome.

Yeah, that didn't work so well since SuperDuper ran across repeated errors trying to do so; I suspect it's something to do with the drive. (SuperDuper complains about WD's MyBook, which is what the drive is.) Because SD stops the entire copy operation on single errors, it'd be a painstaking process.
Besides that, I like doing fresh installs of all the bits.

Migration assistant fails to *find* machine

Very simple, thought I'd fire it up before going to sleep and have a baseline to tune from in the morning. No such luck -- just a band-new 10.5.7 MBP seeking to slurp from a couple year old 10.5.7 Core2Duo iMac. I haven't any FW800 small-port cables, but neither on a dedicated point-to-point ethernet nor on the regular network does migration ***'t get past "looking for other machines" stage after specifying who is sending and who is receiving. I presume this is either a sign I shouldn't bother with it or some completely braindead thing done on my part.

Thanks, Pondini, but the Time Machine disk passes the Disk Utility repairs and only the spinning wheel was visible under both the Setup Assistant and the Migration Assistant.
I now have some good news, and some bad.
First the good news: Lion's Migration Assistant offers the option to copy user (and other) files from the previous OSX disk, not just the Time Machine disk. If this option was already in Snow Leopard, then I missed it.
Now the bad news..
I spent several hours reading (Pondini's and others') suggestions to ensure that my Time Machine is as seamless as possible, namely, for the next backup to be incremental. No luck: all user data are copied. Until the interface of Time Machine stops trying so hard to shield us naive users from making decisions on our own, one idea is to keep the iPod and pictures/video collection backed-up by the straight-forward rsync. Then whether Time Machine is really incremental will not matter, and in any case a spare copy of the documents you wrote by hand is nice in case the some blocks of the disk fail.
But I may have been the one who messed it. In Preferrences \ Time Machine \ Options... I excluded all users except the user "Admin" who restored the user accounts. The idea was to test first whether the mildest user will get a full backup. It may be that Time Machine does not look in the history to see if a given file or set of files already have some copy in the past. If a file does not exist in the very last backup, it is saved to the Time Machine disk.
If you're reading this and are keen on an incremental backup, try this: restore your user accounts using a user Admin, but do not start to backup until after the accounts are restored. Will the backup afterwards be incremental?

Migration assistant fails repeatedly

I just bought a new MB and have been trying to transfer info from my old one. I have run Migration Assistant multiple times, but it fails at a certain point. After moving a lot of my info, it eventually hangs and says that "The other Mac is not responding. Make sure that all of your network devices are connected and turned on." It has a button to continue, but that never works. I have no idea why it would quit as I have not touched anything. Any advice would be appreciated. TIA

Perhaps Pondinis' Excellent Information may be of value to you...
Have a look at this Link...
Using Migration Assistant on Lion
From here
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html

Migration Assistant fails or freezes every time

2008 iMac running Mavericks to a new iMac over ethernet connection.
I have run software update on both iMacs, I have run "repair disk" and "fix permissions" on both.
Every time i run migration assistant, it never completes. it looks like its running, and the esitmated time left begins to count down, but eventually it just stays at 2hrs remaining, or 2hrs 30 minutes remaining. And I let it run for 15 hours.
I am forced to reboot the computers to get them back, and the new iMac has NO data transferred, and the old Mac remains as is (as expected).
Also, Time Machine fails on the 2008. I have tried to run time machine to more than one firewire drive.
Not sure how to proceed.

Sounds like you've been through the ringer . After Apple replaced FW with Thunderbolt my boss tasked one of the techs and me to investigate alternatives. We both found WiFi useless for anything more than a couple GB of data and even then we experienced too many failures to recommend it. Theoretically migrating with Ethernet should be a good choice but once again we experienced failures we couldn't explain. That led us to recommend users back up via clone or TimeMachine to an external drive and migrate using the external drive.
That should have ended the matter but I've since added a qualifier to that recommendation; a USB external drive may be your best option. We've always known that some FW chipsets were flaky but an additional layer of flakiness has been added with the Thunderbolt/FireWire adaptor.

Does Migration Assistant require and up and running Windows machine?

Our home Windows desktop just died. The contents of the hard drive are still intact. We are getting an iMac to replace it. Can the Migration Assistant work with just the hard drive (connected via usb in an enclosure) or does it require a Windows machine running? If I need a running machine, is there any work around or, failing that, does anyone know any good programs to help migrate files? I could just copy manually, but that might take a while.
Thanks!

BillyoGump wrote:
Can the Migration Assistant work with just the hard drive (connected via usb in an enclosure)
No, you must install Windows Migration Assistant on the PC and connect it to your network (or Mac).
If I need a running machine, is there any work around
Yup.
See the Manually Migrating section towards the bottom of Switch 101: Migrate your Windows files or system to your Mac.

Migration Assistant fails to recognize a Time Machine disk (itself migrated using Disk Utility)

So I outgrow my Time Machine disk. I listen to the advice (repeated in multiple places) that one can simply use Disk Utility's Restore tab, select the old time machine disk as source and the new one as destination, and click restore to copy block-by-block, then rename the disk.
This works very well. I have indeed been able to use Time Machine on the new disk without losing any of the history.
But now I am in trouble. I am also outgrowing my MacBook disk. I put a larger disk in and install Snow Leopard from scratch. Now Migration Assistant does not recognize the new Time Machine disk (perpetually spinning wheel). Renaming the disk to the old name does not help. M.A. does recognize the old Time Machine disk, but that means manually managing the changes (and giving up on the larger TM disk). I reinstall Snow Leopard and do not miss that time the option to restore from Time Machine, but it still does not see the new Time Machine disk.
How does one convince Migration Assistant to use a Time Machine disk that duly has Backups.backupdb as a root folder and where "ignore ownership on this volume" is not set?

Thanks, Pondini, but the Time Machine disk passes the Disk Utility repairs and only the spinning wheel was visible under both the Setup Assistant and the Migration Assistant.
I now have some good news, and some bad.
First the good news: Lion's Migration Assistant offers the option to copy user (and other) files from the previous OSX disk, not just the Time Machine disk. If this option was already in Snow Leopard, then I missed it.
Now the bad news..
I spent several hours reading (Pondini's and others') suggestions to ensure that my Time Machine is as seamless as possible, namely, for the next backup to be incremental. No luck: all user data are copied. Until the interface of Time Machine stops trying so hard to shield us naive users from making decisions on our own, one idea is to keep the iPod and pictures/video collection backed-up by the straight-forward rsync. Then whether Time Machine is really incremental will not matter, and in any case a spare copy of the documents you wrote by hand is nice in case the some blocks of the disk fail.
But I may have been the one who messed it. In Preferrences \ Time Machine \ Options... I excluded all users except the user "Admin" who restored the user accounts. The idea was to test first whether the mildest user will get a full backup. It may be that Time Machine does not look in the history to see if a given file or set of files already have some copy in the past. If a file does not exist in the very last backup, it is saved to the Time Machine disk.
If you're reading this and are keen on an incremental backup, try this: restore your user accounts using a user Admin, but do not start to backup until after the accounts are restored. Will the backup afterwards be incremental?

Migration Assistant Failures - And Solutions

I used Migration Assistant to transfer my account from an Air to a new MacBook Pro. I share the problems I ran into and the solutions I used in the hopes it helps someone else.
First failure: the six digit confirmation number from the target (Mac Book Pro) would not display on the source (Air). For some reason when I turned IPv6 on in Network preferences | WiFi | Advanced | TCP/IP | Configure IPv6 - to "Automatically" - the source displayed the confirmation number from the target. The target already had IPv6 on Automatic - in fact all our OS X devices has it on Automatic - except for the Air for some odd reason.
The Migration Assistant took some time to finish the transfer - but, it did finish - or so I thought.
Second failure: When I started the new user that was transferred - I got a number of errors. In looking at the user home folder - I found that the library and other permissions were badly mangled. Even OS X asked for permission to repair the library - I typed in my password as requested - clicked OK - but, it never worked.
The scenario 1 posted by Linc Davis fixed all the permissions immediately (see link and the part of the solution I successfully used below).
Linc DavisDec 25, 2014 9:40 PM Re: "The operation could not be completed" Creating an iMovie
Re: "The operation could not be completed" Creating an iMoviein response to patrickredsox
Back up all data before proceeding.
This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership, permissions, and access controls to the default. If you've intentionally set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it, but you do need to follow the instructions below.
Step 1
If you have more than one user, and the one in question is not an administrator, then go to Step 2.
Triple-click anywhere in the following line on this page to select it:
sudo find ~ $TMPDIR.. -exec chflags -h nouchg,nouappnd,noschg,nosappnd {} + -exec chown -h $UID {} + -exec chmod +rw {} + -exec chmod -h -N {} + -type d -exec chmod -h +x {} + 2>&-
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The command may take several minutes to run, depending on how many files you have. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear, then quit Terminal.

So I Found the issue.... It was stored in Private/var/zz/cleanup at startup
I found the profile name (home file) in the cleanup at startup folder and deleted it. System is working and now I have my disk space back.
I followed the directions that Linc Davis suggested in this post: How do I resolve 43+ GB of missing storage on the Macintosh HD?

Migration Assistant - Failing to Transfer some Files?

I just used Migration Assistant when setting up my new MacBook Pro to pull over the contents of my old (early 2008) MacBook Pro. The Software ran without a glitch and the new machine is functioning normally.
However, when I look in "About This Mac - More Info - Storage", the aggregate memory used by files on the hard drive of my new machine for categories such as "Audio" and "Photos" differs from that on my old machine (about 10-20% less than the space used for these on the old machine). I didn't see any settings to select only a partial transfer, so the process should have pulled over everything, and now I'm worried there may be important files stranded on the old machine. Finding these amongst my library of music and photos could be very time consuming.
Does this mean not everything transferred, or could there be another explanation? I do recall that in iPhoto and Lightroom on the old machine there were placeholders for images that it said were no longer on the computer. Perhaps this is related and these "ghosts" explain the difference in what was pulled over?
Thanks for any advice.
Garrett

If you are migrating to a larger internal HD, then, percentage wise, these files would be taking up less space on your machine. Where are you getting these percentages from?
Finder Menu > Apple Logo About this Mac > More Info > Storage
#only shows disk usage in GB, not as % figures.
"The Software ran without a glitch and the new machine is functioning normally."
I suspect nothing is wrong and all your data was transferred.

Migration Assistant Issues and Tips

So I had to restore my MacBook Pro after it didn't shut down properly and wouldn't start up.
I'm using Lion, latest patches.
I wanted to share what I've learned in the event someone encounters a similar situation like I did.
I tried searching Communities but I couldn't find much that helped me out.
Operating system wouldn't load at all.
I am using a Time Capsule with Time Machine.
If you are trying to restore from Time Machine (and you had to reload the OS) I suggest reloading it after you've logged in.
When you are prompted to create a user account, do not create one with the same name you used before. Create a
temporary account and call it temp.
Use the temp account to restore only the Users first. Do not select any other options like Applications, Settings and Other Files.
(Doing this can leave you in the dreaded 'Transferring files to support applications' hanging forever state - I figured out what causes this which
I will explain later)
The restore of Users from Time Machine/Time Capsule was successful for me.
I then re-started my laptop and pressed the 'Option' key during start up to get in to the recovery drive. I am doing this only to access the disk
utility to 'Verify and Repair permissions'. - Which needed to be done as it reported some permissions needed to be fixed.
I then rebooted back into Lion.
I installed EACH section one by one.
I chose not to restore Applications. I have a list of all the programs I've installed - luckily - and I have the original disks so I can re-install them. I think you can restore Applications successfully despite what some people have reported/suggested.
The reason why I restored each item, Users, Applications, Settings, Other FIles, one by one is because I was running into an issue. I was running into an issue when I tried restoring all 4 options mentioned above.
I found out one of the things that causes the 'Transferring files to support application' status message to hang there forever. It would cause Migration Assistant to run and never completely shut down on its own. I opened up Activity Monitor and found that after Migration Tool and Migration Assistant are done their thing, a program called 'SHOVE' runs. And it runs FOREVER. It won't stop. It sucked up my CPU usage too. I also had my Console open and was watching 'All Messages', and I could see that SHOVE was doing something with temp files, but it was never stopping.
--- I believe restoring the option 'Other Files' is what causes the 'Transferring files to support application' hanging. So don't restore that. Or if you really want to restore it, open up activity monitor and watch for the SHOVE process. I co-related it with the Disk Activity tool, once I saw Disk Activity DROP, either flat line or become really low then that's when I Force Quit the SHOVE process.
If you use Activity Monitor to Force Quit the SHOVE process, then Migration Tool and Migration Assistant will finally say that everything has been restored - BUT BUT BUT. It doesn't do so if you tried to restore everything all at once. Even after I rebooted. You MUST restore each item separately.
After I used Activity Monitor to force quit the SHOVE process, I noticed in my Console/All Messages reported that Migration Assistant exited properly.

BA88 wrote:
Hi,
Hi and welcome to the forums.
What I am trying to do is migrate all of my old stuff, from a hard drive image on an external hard drive (firewire).
How was that made? Is it really an image, or a backup of some sort (Time Machine, CarbonCopyCloner, SuperDuper, the Restore tab of Disk Utility, etc.)?
I get a network error. I have tried migrating whilst still in the boot mode on the OXS DVD
That's via +Setup Assistant+ when it first starts up, per [Using Setup Assistant|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/SetupAsst.html]?
I don't understand why you're getting a network error if you're migrating from a FireWire drive. Are you sure the connections are snug and secure? Have you tried a different FireWire cable?

Migration assistant fails and eats storage

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