Migration Assistant File Transfer via Ethernet 20+ Hours?

Question

I have been trying to transfer all my files from my old MBP mid-2010 to my new MBP late-2013. I have turned off the Air Port (Wi-Fi) on both computers and connected them directly (not through a router) with an Ethernet cable and a Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adaptor. At the beginning of the process, Migration Assistant indicated an estimated time to completion of less than 2 hours. However, now, after more than three hours into the process, the estimated remaining time indicated is more than 20 hours. The total amount of data to be transferred was estimated by Migration Assistant at the beginning of the process to be approximately 290 GB.
Is it normal for such a transfer to take such a long time?
Should I stop the transfer operation and start from scratch?
Should I have run a Repair Permissions in Disk Utility on the old computer before starting the transfer (just in case)?
What should I do now?
Thank you very much for your help.

Answer 1

If you have allowed file sharing in Sys Prefs/Sharing on the old Mac, and if you have chosen Bonjour computers for the Sidebar of Finder windows in the Finder's Preferences on the new Mac, then your old Mac should appear in the Sidebar under Shared. I find that this works best with two horizontal Finder windows, one above the other with both in Column View stretched out to 5 or 6 columns. Use one for browsing to locations on your new Mac and the other to browse to locations on the old Mac.
Highlight your old Mac's name in the Sidebar of one of the windows and in the 1st column you will see an icon for the Mac and under that a button that says Connect. Press the button and you are presented with a dialog box. Enter the long name for your user account on the old Mac and its password. You should be immediately connected to the old Mac and you will have full access to your user account. You can now browse to anywhere in your account and drag & drop things from one window to the same location on your new Mac in the other window. If your account on the old Mac is an admin account, you should also have full access to everything on both of the hard drives on the old Mac.
If by chance when you highlight the old Mac in the sidebar and you are already connected as Guest then the button will say Disconnect. Press it and disconnect the Guest account and then follow the steps above to connect to your user account.
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