Migration Assistant in Lion leaving bits off?

I ran the MA and had all the boxes checked to bring everything over from a 2009 Mini/Snow to a 2011 Mini/Lion. It ran over WiFi (should have used FW800) and seemed to have worked (after 20 hours or so) except it only appears to have ported programs over - no Documents, Pictures, Movies, Downloads etc. - none of the data in the Home/Users folders.
Granted, this type of data is easily drag/dropped over the network, transferred on disk, or sync'ed etc. Only one single program came back as incompatible! (Default Folder X)
Also missing/trashed - all settings. Mail, Address Book, Monitor calibration being big items among those, but also things like Yahoo Messenger, Little Snitch, RapidoStart, Trackpad, I don't even know all of them yet - but it seems pretty much vacant.
It's been a while but I don't recall such an incomplete migration from any Mac->Mac transfer I've ever done before. Is this due to Lion?

Apparently after looking into this, I've sort of answered my own question (again).
Chances are, I need to wipe the drive and start over with Setup Assistant via Firewire in Target Disk mode to properly port things in place (as a replacement Mac).
One good summary of this is http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/SetupLion.html
This is a bit of a PITA but will give me a chance to play with the new boot partition which I was asking about in another thread (not being able to see it in Disk Utility).
One thing I don't understand - the boot partition is a bare bones startup system - then afterwards one has to (automatically?) download all the stock Apple LionOS programs that normally come bundled with the Mac anyway. This is really dumb IMHO. Why not put them all in the OSboot partition to start with and let Software Update add new versions as needed? What am I missing here?
On that same note - I would like to be able to own/buy/burn my own Lion+Bundled Programs DVD(s) as a backup in case the HDD dies completely. AFAIK Apple doesn't even sell the DVD set to do this? Odd.

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Migration Assistant problem: Lion to Lion does not work

Background:I have a 2 year old 15" MBP. I just purchased and tonight am setting up a brand new 27" iMac 2.7Ghz i5.
I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion the day it was released on the MBP. A day later, I purchased the iMac which still had Snow Leopard so I used the "up to date" program to get a free version of Lion. I did a clean install of Lion on the iMac since it was brand new.
Problem: I connected the MBP and iMac via Ethernet cables connected to my Airport Extreme. Migration Assistant worked on the initial steps, finding the MBP and matching the authentication codes. After that, I get to the screen where the iMac is looking for files on the MBP and calculating the size of folders to move. On this screen (on the iMac side), an error box pops on and off many times for about a minute then stays there with the following: "Your other Mac stopped responding.    Make sure that all of your network devices are connected and turned on. If you cancel the transfer, use Migration Assistant to complete the transfer later.      Looking for your Mac..." It only gives me the button to "Cancel Transfer"
My connections were fine. I was able to connect until this point. This issue happens whether the connection is Ethernet network via Airport Extreme, both connected via Wifi from the Airport Extreme, or connected directly via Firewire 800. I've tried everything I can think of. No solution and have not found this issue here or on any other forum. Any ideas? I really want to use the Migration Assistant route with this. I've use it before on previous Mac's with no issues.

I just talked to the Apple support and they suggested to try the migration using Time Machine. That's was also my idea this morning so I'm trying to do this now.
For the Apple support I add the repeating part from the console here:
25.07.11 23:44:01,106 MigrateTool: (SRV) ! (26) `o:incompatibleAppsInfoForPaths p:/Library/Screen Savers/3D Weather Globe Deluxe Edition.saver... [92] o:(null)... [0]'
25.07.11 23:44:01,106 MigrateTool: (PA!): failed to serialize result: (null)
25.07.11 23:44:01,107 MigrateTool: (SRV)            -> served 0.000004 MB... 0.001252s @0.003047MB/s
25.07.11 23:44:01,709 MigrateTool: (SRV) -> Reset Server Control...
25.07.11 23:44:01,710 MigrateTool: (SRV) ! (27) `o:sizeForAbsolutePath p:/Users/andreas/Desktop... [1] o:(null)... [0]'
25.07.11 23:44:01,773 MigrateTool: (SRV)            -> served 0.000230 MB... 0.062471s @0.003679MB/s

Migration Assistant in Lion OS not working

Installed Lion OS on both my iMac I7 and my Mac NoteBookPro with I7 processor. Tried to connect the two computers with Firewire but no luck. The remote HD pops up on the desktop but Migration Assistant cannot find the other computer, irrespective of which one I make the client. Exactly the same happens with ethernet cable. I do know that Firewire on the NoteBook worked under Snow Leopard. Any ideas anyone, please, or is Migration Assistant actually stuffed,
Best Regards
Dietrich

I believe Migration Assistant was upgraded for Lion early in the week. Do you have the latest? Should be Version 4.
Look here http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1420
Phil
Message was edited by: w7ox

Migration Assistant Failure - Lion - MacBook Air

I'm trying to migrate my 2010 13-inch MacBook Air to a 2011 13-inch Macbook Air. Tried all kinds of ways. Migration Assistant reports that it keeps loosing the connection between the two Macs. Even tried the peer-to-peer option. I think this is a bug in Lion. ***** because now I'm forced to make a Time Machine backup of the old machine to try that method. Six hours from now!!!

What have you done so far.
I did the same Migration this way:
First I did a full Bootable copy of my old MacBook AIr HD to an external HD, then I connected the external HD to the new MacBook AIr via USB cable and did the Migration.
In one hour I had the new MBA a mirror copy of my old MBA, no problems at all.
I hope this may help you and others.
Before doing this I asked at the Apple store if I could use an USB connection to do the Migration and the answer was "NO"!!!!!!
Good luck.

Migration Assistant in Lion won't recognize Time Machine backup from Snow Leopard

I just got an iMac with Lion. I am trying to use the Migration Assistant to move my files/apps etc from a Time Machine backup to the new computer. The MA will not recognize the backup drive - (external firewire 800). I can see the backup drive on my desktop but it does not show up as an option to choose in the Migration Assistant. Any idea what might be wrong. The backup is from an iMac running Snow Leopard and all the system software was last updated on Dec 9th. It think it is as current as I could get with Snow Leopard. Any ideas what is wrong?
Thanks,
Chad

This happened to me after hard drive replacement under the Seagate Drive Recall at the local Apple Store. Here's what I learned from the process:
I Wagged the Mac home, fired it up (with naked OS installed at the Apple Store), and it wouldn't see my Time Machine drive with Setup Assistant - not on firewire 800 nor USB. Just a grey spinner that lasts forever. When I try just continuing anyway, it offers me something that looks plausible, but then puts up a dialog about duplicate user name, and no matter what I enter, it always says "that user already exists". So I think - maybe Migration Assistant. Complete the setup, create an account, watch the nice welcome movie. BAM - there's my Time Machine drive on the desktop. OK - it has to work . . . but no. Same behavior in Migration Assistant, plus the new OS offers to start making backups on my Time Machine disk - it's not recognizing it at all.
So - back to the Apple Store - let the genius figure it out. It turns out there are multiple problems. First, the "genius" who imaged my new machine picked 10.7.2 but my machine had 10.7.5 - turns out, it's not enough just to have right cat. Even a point release older OS may not recognize a newer Time Machine drive. The guy at the desk said "We have images of everything but the 10.7.2 has free iLife in it, so they like to use that one". What the heck? They don't image what you had originally as a matter of sane process?
Having figured that out, we re-image 10.7.5 at the store thinking we've fixed it. But no - Setup Assistant still won't see the Time Machine drive. Not on USB, not on Firewire. Not in a box, not with a fox.
So here's the second trick - newer machines have a recovery partion. see: http://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/ Boot with the option key held down, pick that partition, then you'll get a "system restore" option, to restore your whole system from a Time Machine backup. My drive was recognized by the recovery partition restore process when neither Setup nor Migration Assistant would. Obviously, there's something broken in Setup/Migration Assistant.
Takeaway:
- if you're getting a drive replaced by Apple, make sure they image *exactly* the same OS
- if Setup Assistant fails, use the recovery partition for system restore
- Use Recovery Disk Assistant http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433 NOW to make yourself a recovery thumb drive just in case. With Apple's new "no media" approach to the OS, you're hosed without it.

Will Migration Assistant Continue Where It Left Off?

I'm transferring applications from my MacBook to my new MacBook Air via Migration Assistant over my wireless network. It's been transferring for over 24 hours, and says it will finish in 19 hours. I was wondering if aborting it prematurely (using Command-Q) would damage the applications or hardware, and if I continue the migration later, will it pick up where it left off or start again?

It's a really bad idea to use MA over wi-fi, depending on the amount of data you have it could take up to a week to complete! It's much wiser (and faster) to connect using FW or FW800 if both machines have it. Aborting mid migration will only result in an incomplete migration, in that case it's wise to reinstall OS X onto the new machine and start over this time connecting via FW.

Serious issue after Migration Assistant

Hi all-
Looking for feedback as to what in **** might be going on with my MacBook Pro and how to proceed with it.
Last weekend I bought a 27" iMac for my home office. For various reasons I did not transfer data from my laptop at the time of setup, but the next night.
When I went to use Migration Assistant (after reading a bit on here about it), everything went fine until I actually entered the code the network code the iMac gave me and tried to start the transfer. The MacBook Pro wouldn't respond; the iMac told me it wasn't responding, and the MBP wouldn't quit Migration Assistant. Even after waiting an hour, Migration Assistant was still frozen, so I did a "hard" power off with the power button.
When I went to restart, the drive started, startup chimed, but the screen stayed black. I had to leave for work, so hard-turned it off again and left it alone. When I returned to it last night, I got past the black screen but it would stay in grey screen for around 7-8 minutes, then alternated every 10-15 seconds between a light blue screen with the spinning spokes wheel (not rainbow) and a slightly darker blue window with no spokes. It went back and forth like this for maybe 5 minutes, so I shut the MBP off again and went through the whole process a second time with the same result.
Since I live almost 4 hours from the nearest Apple Store, and Support was closed, I used my Snow Leopard disk to repair permissions - there were a lot of repairs. I then repaired disk, and was told the disk was fine. I restarted, same grey-light blue-dark blue issues, so reinstalled Snow Leopard.
After the OS reinstall, everything restarted and worked fine! I did a software update, then on the second software update (which as I recall was just java and iTunes) things went south again. When I restarted after the second software update the screen did the black thing again. Keys are lighting up, chime happens, but no screen.
The other thing that is different this time is that the green light on the power cable is not lighting up and I cannot seem to boot to the Snow Leopard disk, so I can't even get back to the post-OS-reinstall-pre-software-update stage again to get my data off the machine.
Not sure what to do next! This sound like a clear-cut issue of the X or the Y to anyone? Any feedback is appreciated.
With blessings,
Matthew

Did you use Setup Assistant when your new Mac first started up, or skip that, create a user account, then use the Migration Assistant app in your Applications/Utilties folder?
If you used Setup Assistant, when you started your first backup you should have gotten the message in #B5 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting. It sounds like you didn't (or chose Start New Backup). And no, the Leopard procedure doesn't work on Snow Leopard. That's what #B5 is for.
Usually, if you use Setup Assistant, Time Machine will still say it's going to do a full backup, and make room for it, but actually do an incremental backup (very, very slowly).
Either way, it usually deletes a lot of old backups. We're hoping that will be fixed in Lion.
Once it's decide to make a new backup, there's no known way to prevent it.

Migration Assistant fails me again

It seems every time I rely on Migration Assistant it bites me in the a**.
In the past, it wouldn't recognize certain partitions on an external drive.
This time, I thought it shoud be straighforward. My MacBook went in for repair and came back with a new hard drive. No problem, I thought. I'll just use Migration Assistant to get my files from my iMac (10.4.9, Core 2 Duo).
I booted the iMac into Firewire mode, and it mounted on the desktop of my MacBook, but Migration Assistant wouldn't budge, complaining that the attached disk does not have a partition with OS X on it. Huh???
Nothing I could do could cajole it into recognizing it.
Why does Migration Assistant have so much trouble. If the OS sees the drive, why can't Migration Assistant?
various Mac OS X (10.4.9)

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

Using migration assistant from HDD only to SSD+HDD?

Hi,
Usually, when buying a new mac and starting it for the first time, I use the migration assistant to get everything (software, settings, data...) from my time capsule backup.
I am currently using an iMac 24'' which only has a "standard" HDD. I am however thinking about upgrading to the latest iMacs, potentially with the "SSD+HDD" option.
The description on the "Configure" page of the online store says : "If you configure your iMac with both the solid-state drive and a Serial ATA hard drive, it will come preformatted with Mac OS X and all your applications on the solid-state drive. Then you can use the hard drive for videos, photos, and other files."
My question is therefore the following : would the migration assistant be "smart enough" to place my OS and applications on the SSD drive, and the rest of my files ("videos, photos, and other files.") on the HDD?
Thanks in advance!

I had the same issue some time ago: I added a 32 gb SSD to my mac running leopard. Then wanted to use install Snow Leopard and use migration assistant to restore the sytem with Snow leopard and applications on the SSD, and the user folders on the old 250gb HD. Turns out this isn't possible. Manually accessing your time machine or other backup up to restore files by hand is a pain. Just installing Snow Leopard and pointing the user folder to the Leopard user folder on the HD creates problems too, just as pointing it to a newly created folder.
Solution:
-Backup your old system with time machine to an external disk
-Note: make sure you don't mix up SSD and HD in this manual.
-Install SSD (If this means you no longer have a cd drive, use a copy of snow leopard on an external drive).
-BE SURE YOUR OLD SYSTEM IS BACKED UP WITH TIME MACHINE.
-Then install OS X TWICE: once on the old HD and once the SSD. Wipe your HD with Disk Utility before install.
-Start up OS X on the HD, use the option key at startup if necessery to select the right disk.
-Use migration assistant to restore from the time machine backup. Now you have a fresh install of OS X, with your user files and applications intact.
-Now startup OS X on the SSD.
-Make the SSD startup disk in system preferences -> Startup disk.
-Go to System preferences -> Users. Unlock. Create an extra user, so you end up with a spare user account, and one you will actually use. Now right click on the user account thats going to be used, and select your user folder on the HD that you just restored with Migration assistant. Just leave the spare one. It is for emergencies and also disk failures: OS X is designed to have user and system files on the same disk, so you should always have one user account sticking those rules.
-Restart OS X on the SSD as asked.
-Now all thats left to do is migrate applications from the HD application folder to the SSD application folder by simply copy/pasting. This is trial and error, but in my case 90% of the applications gave no trouble at all. The ones that did are library based media applications like Aperture. All I needed to do is go to their preferences and point them to their old libraries on the HD. MS Office was the only application that needed full reinstalling. The applications that ship with the OS don't need to be migrated of course since they are already there on the SSD.
-Point your dock icons to the right folders (on the HD) and applications (on the SSD)
-Make a new time machine backup
-Last step, optional: clean up the HD. You don't need the system folder that is still there, but I chose to keep it for a while as a backup. I left the library in place there too, since I don't know which applications still use it, but in time I will clean it up too.
And one more thing: Since Migration assistant doesnt' just copy files, but also seams to adapt application databases of Apple apps to work with a newer version of an application coming with a new OS, such as Mail, Safari, iCal and Address Book, this is probably going to be the best way to upgrade an SSD+HD setup to Lion too. (Lion has better SSD support). Provided of course that Apple doesn't update Migration assistant, which is what should actually be done. Upgrading this way took me 2,5 hours, most of which was spent waiting ofcourse.
Message was edited by: jason487
Message was edited by: jason487

HT4796 windows migration assistant has errors in preparing data on my PC

Hi,
just got my new iMac and want to migrate files from my Windows XP machine using Windows Migration Assistant for Lion. It seemed to install OK on the PC but it will not run. It comes up with an message saying found errors in preparing data. Any ideas?
Peter

Are you using wifi to migrate?

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

Where is the Windows Migration Assistant?

Window XP machines does not appear in the Lion Migration Assistant. Do I need to download software to the PC before running the Migration Assistant? Where is the software to download?

Is this what you want: Windows Migration Assistant for Lion?
Also, see Boot Camp - Installation & Setup Guide (OS X Lion)

Migration assistant does not see my time machine disk

I had an issue with my hard disk on my imac in which I had to re-format and reinstall the OS. Since 10.7 is not available as a "rescue reinstall disk", I had to reinstall 10.6. When that finished, the install asked if I would like to transfer my stuff from Time Machine. I said "yes". Unfortunately, my time machine disk does not show up! Migration Assistant thinks my "macintosh HD" system disk is the only disk available as the time machine backup. So I skipped migration. I went ahead and did all of the OS upgrades to get back to 10.7.3. I re-connected all external disks (I have 4-the time machine disk included) and tried migration assistant again. The only disk migration assistant still thinks is available as the time machine backup is the macintosh HD system disk, not the one called "Time Machine Backup". Time machine backup is a western digital 2TB usb 2.0 disk.
So....
I decided this morning to re-do everything again (since I still could not get my data back). Guess what?!?! the same thing is happening! Migration Assistant thinks that the macintosh HD is the time machine disk and does not see any others - even though the disk is there and mounted!
Please help! I would like my data back, but I am not able to pay Apple at the Apple store or a phone call to them for help!
Thanks!
Diana

Diana Stephens wrote:
Migration Assistant thinks my "macintosh HD" system disk is the only disk available as the time machine backup.
Those are your backups. Migration Assistant shows the name of the disk and system that were backed-up, not the disk they're on. It will not show the disk you're running from.
See the tan box in Using Migration Assistant on Lion.

Migration assistant network setup

I am trying to Migrate information from my iMac to my Macbook Air, the Migration assistant network setup is asking for a passcode from my macbook air, how do i find this passcode??? can anyone help please...

I do hope you're connected via Ethernet -- migrating via WIFI is quite slow and not too reliable.
You need to have Migration Assistant running on both Macs; one generates the passcode for you to enter on the other one.
See either Using Migration Assistant on Lion or Using Migration Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard.

Migration assistant will it delete my new profile and info?

I bought a new mac several months ago and in my eagerness I set it up. after a few months I realised I needed quite a few files from my Time machine I had from my old computer. If I do a migration assistant, will it erase all of the things I have since put on the the new computer (movies, music, files etc). Confused, I cant find an answer to this anywhere.

No, it won't erase anything.
But if you transfer one or more user accounts, they will be separate from your existing accounts -- it cannot "merge" the data into an existing account. See Using Migration Assistant on Lion for the gory details.
Depending on the circumstances, you may be able to restore selected items from the backups, via the "Star Wars" display. To see the backups for a different Mac, you'll need the Browse ... option, perTime Machine - Frequently Asked Question #17.

Migration Assistant in Lion leaving bits off?

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