Migration Assistant in Mavericks is Broken

I boot a Mac into Target Disk Mode, connect it to the Mac I want the User Home Folder from, and launch Migration Assistant on the source computer. When it displays the drive, instead of the orange drive icon titled Macintosh HD (Thunderbolt or FireWire) it displays as a white sheet titled Macintosh HD. When you click Continue your options to migrate are Applications and network settings only. The size of what will be migrated is smaller than what you would expect for the Applications folder, and the migration completes in about a minute. I have to do this dance of un-mounting, remounting; un-mounting and rebooting both computers: booting the computer with the Target Disk Mode computer attached to the source; attaching it to the source after booting up... Eventually the drive will show up with the orange icon and the migration will work properly but rarely does it happen the first time. But why?!?! Is Migration Assistant just utterly broken? I thought it was OS related at first from 10.8 to 10.9 but I've tried just about all combinations. Going from 10.6 to 10.9 (not happening), from 10.7 to 10.9 (nope), 10.8 to 10.9 (sometimes after I do the dance), and 10.9 to 10.9 after doing the dance. Seriously, it's only worked for me like it's supposed to less than 10% of the time. And my work has involved over 50 migrations since Mavericks has been released. I've always run Software Update on the computer I want to migrate from. So 10.8 machines are updated to 10.8.5 first, etc. When I go from Mavericks to Mavericks I make sure they are at the same (10.9.2 to 10.9.2, etc.). Nothing seems to work cleanly.

When I boot the source in TDM and run Migration asst on the target and choose "From a Mac" I get this:
And after selecting that I get this:

Similar Messages

Migration Assistant in Mavericks not listing Users

I thought I would experiment with using Migration Assistant on my two MBPs since I will be helping someone tomorrow transfer their data from an old iMac to a new one.
I have a Mavericks MBP and a Mountain Lion MBP and connected them together via ethernet. I opened MA on the Mavericks MBP, followed instructions and opened MA on the ML MBP. Confirmed Passcode and clicked continue and waited for the files to list on the Mavericks MBP.
Applications, Settings, and Other files were listed but no User accounts were listed. Only those three items were shown.
I'm in the admin account on both Macs and the ML MBP has four user accounts.
What gives? Why aren't Users listed also?
Thanks for any help.

Here's some more information for you.
I have an iMac, Model 10,1 , with Mountain Lion installed. So, both iMac and one of the MBPs are running the same OS.
I thought I would try MA between those two. I set everything up to transfer from my ML MBP to the iMac, and all data was listed in MA on the iMac. MA worked great.
So why wasn't all the data listed on the Mavericks MBP when I ran MA between the MBPs?
The two MBPs are identical, Model 3,1 , except for the OS, one is the latest Mavericks version and the other is the latest Mountian Lion version.
I also noticed in MA on the Mavericks MBP that when the three items were listed only the Settings item had calculated the size correctly, the Applications and Other files were showing 0kb, which I know is incorrect.
On the iMac the sizes for Users, Applications, Settings, and Other files, were all shown and were correct.
Does anyone know why MA is not working between two identical MBPs, but is working between a newer iMac and older MBP?
Thanks...

Migration Assistant issues, Mavericks

So this has been frustrating. Two MBPs connected by ethernet, both running updated Mavericks. Both have wifi turned off, both have firewalls turned off, both manually assigned IPs on same network (finally got to all of those things being done after only the source machine was not being seen in Migration Assistant). Trying to migrate one user from old machine to new.
Now that I'm here, and both machines are seeing each other, getting a matching code, etc... when I get to the page on the new machine where I select what I want to pull over from the old machine, it only gives me a few options. One being an Applications folder with a listed size of 0 kb, one being computer with 141 kb, and one being other files with 0kb listed. (I'm going off memory as I'm typing this on one of the machines I was trying to do this on.
No ability to select a user, etc. WHAT THE ****?

This worked for me one time, but I had to wipe and re-do my whole system (different issue) and this solution did not work for me the second time. Instead, I had to disable my firewall on the original old mac completely to have my user accounts and other data show up as transferrable into the new mac. After messing around with it and reading a lot of other people's problems with this, I thought I should post my solution for others in case this works for them.

HT204350 Migration Assistant in Mavericks does not allow User account migration

Users accounts do not show up at all.

After a similar problem I found http://www.hardturm.ch/luz/2014/02/fixing-os-x-10-9-mavericks-migration-from-ext ernal-volume/ which explains that since Migration assistant logs you out, it also unmounts external disks. As AtlNCS Admin points out, they have a solution in using ssh and command line stuff to mount the needed disk remotely, but someone in the comments had a simpler solution: do not plug in the external firewire disk until after launchine Migration Assistant. So before running MA, eject the external disk that you want to migrate to the new machine (and unplug it) then start Migration Assistant and after selecting "migrate from an attached disk" THEN plug in the disk. It worked for me.

Migration Assistant vs Mavericks = Problems?

Hello all,
I am trying to use Migration Assistant to transfer everything from my old Mac book to my new iMac 27".
Both have Mavericks installed.
Both have system preferences set to "never sleep".
But each time I attempt migration one or both computers go to sleep within seconds, and migration fails!
Any advice?

I had migration problems transferring data from old Mac Book Pro running Mavericks (10.9) to new MBP Running Mavericks (10.9).
The only solution that worked for me and have everything run correctly was to migrate from my Time Machine Time Capsule.
Here is what I did To Fix Migrate Problems From Old Mac To New Mac -
But Email Did Not Run Correctly after migration:
A. Process To Correct Migration Problems from old Mac Book to New Mac Book:
Set up computer and after it is set up then do steps 1 - 5:
1. Set Apple Preferences > Energy Saver > Put Computer to Sleep Never, Do Not Put Hard Drive To Sleep.
2. Use Disk Utility to verify and correct the source: Disk and Disk Permissions
3. Reset Pram: Restart Computer and Immediately hold down the Command, Option, P, R Keys simultaneously until computer chimes ring twice
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14222
4. Reset SCM (System Management Control): Shut down computer, then: Simultaneously hold down Shift, Control, Option, Power Button - for MacBooks Late 2009 and later
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964
5. Run Migration Assistant (in Utilities Folder which is inside the Applications folder)
B. Email Problems After Migration - GRRR!
After Migration I had Email Problems with my email Sub Folders not being visible, all emails not viewable and could not access my iCloud Email Account.
I tried re-indexing mail by removing Envelop files from the Mail Data folder (path: Go menu, hold down option key, Library > Mail > V2 folder > Mail Data folder > 3 Envelope files (move to desk top).
Nothing worked.
C. Solution: I migrated data from Time Machine Time Capsule to my new Mac Book Pro. All worked correctly - Rejoice!
To Migrate from Time Capsule to new Mac:
Get an Ethernet to Lightning Adapter to connect Time Capsule to New Mac
You can use the Ethernet to USB adapter but Lightning adapter has much faster throughput.
1. Back up your old Mac using Time Machine
2. Connect your new computer to Time Capsule with ethernet to Lightning or USB adapter
3. Verify the Sparsebundle (backup data file) on Time Capsule using Disk Utilitiy
Path to Sparsebundle:
A. Using the Mac connect to Time Capsule go to Finder > Go Menu > Network > select Time Capsule, log into Time Capsule > select User > you will see Sparsebundle file
B. Run Disk Utility to Verify / Fix data
Time to back up data from New Computer to Time Capsule.
I am now running a new backup from new computer to Time Capsule via Ethernet to USB connector (would recommed using Ethernet to Lightning connection).
Backing up 126 GB. So far it has taken 6 hours to back up 7.8 GB. Estimated time to complete is 4 days.
Very slow. When I get my ethernet to Lightning adapter I will replace the USB wth Lightning adapter and would expect a much faster through put - UB2 maxes out at 42 MB per sec and Lightning is at least 5 times faster.

Migration Assistant and user permissions broken

I just used Migration Assistant to my old early 2008 unibody 15" MBP to import stuff to my brand new 15" quad core i7. The old machine was connected through FW800 in target disk mode.
Somehow this process failed and it left me to an odd result which I cannot figure out how or why such things would happen. I have used migration assistant often successfully, if not exactly this way.
I already decided to start things from scratch, but I would appreciate any insight that somebody might have. Like what just happened? Do you have similar experiences?
The process:
- In my old machine I had two users, for the sake of argument, "MainUser" and "OldUser".
- In my new machine I had two users made right after a clean install, "Admin" and "MainUser". I usually work with "MainUser" so I made one without thinking about it much.
- I connected the old machine in Target Disk mode and started Migration Assistant under Admin of the new machine. First question I answered to migrate from another disk, as the other machine was in Target Disk mode. Next one asked to pick the disk and that is followed by a selection "What to migrate". I wanted to install applications from scratch, so I checked everything except applications. I do not know if this is relevant, but I would imagine it is not.
- A pop-up appeared, which correctly told that there already is MainUser on the new machine. The dialog gave me three options: 1. Rename the account that I am transferring, two with the same name could not exist 2. Replace the existing account with the one I am transferring 3. Do not transfer this account.
- I chose 2, because there was nothing worth saving in the MainUser account on the new machine. Continue.
- Watch a few hours of progress bar
- After the migration process the machine was in very odd state. I logged in as MainUser and it oddly looked like default Snow Leopard state, not like the desktop of the migrated account. No folder items that I had on the desktop previously were visible, language was default English and desktop background was the Snow Leopard nebula. I tried, but could not change that in the system preferences.
- Closer inspection revealed that I did not have permissions to access any of the folders under my username, like Documents, Music, Movies etc. This also explained the desktop problems. It meant that none of the programs were allowed to read or write any data under Library folder so everything was and stayed as default. For instance, any settings that I tried to change and which might even apparently change, would reset back on logout. Programs settings were empty, like no bookmarks on Safari or Apple Mail did not show the mail accounts.
- I checked with Terminal what was on with permissions, and for some odd reason, all the folder owners under MainUser belonged to OldUser(!).
- There is no reason that I can think of why that user account would have anything to do with this migration -- after all, the whole deal was supposed to be to migrate (or overwrite) MainUser, not to mess with OldUser in any way, except bring that over as a separate item.
- For the sake of argument, I also logged to OldUser account and that seemed to be transferred correctly. No issues with file permissions or the desktop. Only MainUser was messed.
- I decided to take the ownership of all files under MainUser account back. I did "sudo chmod -R MainUser *" to grab everything. Immediately the stuff on desktop appeared. After logout and login rest of things seemed to return (mostly) to those places that the migrated MainUser should have had, like the desktop background, dock position and even Apple Mail now showed my old emails.
Even if I sort of fixed things, I have iffy feeling about the whole process.
I decided to start over. This time I will not have MainUser account on the new machine to avoid any further hassle. While I suggest everyone to avoid this situation and not to have users with same name or let Migration Assistant to run this overwrite -option, I would like to hear any speculation why or how this might have happened.
If Apple is listening, you might check the latest Migration Assistant in the above case. There might be a bug. Thank you for listening.

I think it is inadvisable to have the same user account on the target machine when using Migration Assistant - just from recollection this is known to cause problems.
However, in my experience (and I have used MA many times across many machines), even when apparently completing successfully, MA simply does not work properly when it comes to permissions.
For example, after using MA to import my previous user account to my new MBP 2.3 i7, I cannot drag anything out of the dock - it just doesn't work.
Also, content of my desktop folder does NOT display on the desktop itself.
I have tried applying specific permissions to this folder, for my user account AND "Everyone" - it makes no difference.
I do not regard Migration Assistant as fit for purpose.

Migration assistant in Mavericks

having trouble using Migration Assisant to tranfer from my 13: iBook to new Mac Mini; it keeps causing the Mac Mini to log out. Help!

Here's some more information for you.
I have an iMac, Model 10,1 , with Mountain Lion installed. So, both iMac and one of the MBPs are running the same OS.
I thought I would try MA between those two. I set everything up to transfer from my ML MBP to the iMac, and all data was listed in MA on the iMac. MA worked great.
So why wasn't all the data listed on the Mavericks MBP when I ran MA between the MBPs?
The two MBPs are identical, Model 3,1 , except for the OS, one is the latest Mavericks version and the other is the latest Mountian Lion version.
I also noticed in MA on the Mavericks MBP that when the three items were listed only the Settings item had calculated the size correctly, the Applications and Other files were showing 0kb, which I know is incorrect.
On the iMac the sizes for Users, Applications, Settings, and Other files, were all shown and were correct.
Does anyone know why MA is not working between two identical MBPs, but is working between a newer iMac and older MBP?
Thanks...

Migration Assistant Mav.: not showing ML Time Machine backup

Hi Mac community,
my own MBP mid 2010:
clean install of Mavericks
connected FireWire 800 external hard disk with recent Time Machine backup done in Mountain Lion
started Migration Assistant, selected the Time Machine disk, and transferred all user data
everything worked absolutely PERFECTLY and now Mavericks runs smoothly with all my old user data
So I wanted to do the same thing with a relative's late 2009 iMac:
still in Mountain Lion, doing Time Machine backups to TWO different USB 2.0 hard disks
browsing the Time Machine disks manually to check whether all the files are there -- they are, including the (hidden) ~/Library folder
clean install worked fine, Mavericks runs OK
starting Migration Assistant in Mavericks ⇒ and - OH HORROR - the connected external Time Machine hard disk does not show up as a source - in fact, NOTHING shows up
So I copied over the data manually, for which I had to enable the root account (how else would one delete/replace a whole ~/Library folder??)
Then I tried to fix permissions manually (because other users could now read the files in the home folder).
All the old data (mails, contacts, calendars) is still there, but the whole thing doesn't really run smoothly; each time one logs into the account, keychain asks weird questions and dock icons pointing to programs show questions marks again. Later today, I'll try to fix permissions for the home folder as a whole (Recovery Boot ⇒ Terminal ⇒ resetpassword ⇒ Reset Home Folder Permissions and ACLs), but I'd rather do another clean install and somehow get Migration Assistant to offer me the Time Machine backup as a source for user data transfer - AS IT SHOULD in an OS that 'just works' ...
Anything I could do to convince Mavericks to use my old Time Machine backup??
This is a real nightmare for me ⇒ I f*cked up a relative's system -- really hope I can fix it again.
Cheers, folks!

sorry, i don't know what else it could be then. if you have another external drive you can try doing a full system restore from the TM backups onto that drive and see if MA will recognize that drive and migrate from it. other than this there is always manual migration. slow and tedious but it can be done. see this link for help with that
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6185507

Migration Assistant 10.9 - Fails to detect external HD for Time Machine

After deciding to upgrade my trusty late 2007 MBP to a new rMBP late 2013 - I wanted to use the migration assistant in mavericks and restore via Time machine. Both Macs are running 10.9.
However after connecting my WD external hardrive (mac version) which is recommended to use with time machine. The migration assistant doesn't seem to detect the HD? It just sits there looking for the source and after 30minutes of waiting,nothing? However in the finder, the HD appears.
I've been researching this online and can't find anything so far which has worked for me.
There were articles relating to a sparse file in the root of the external HD - mine doesn't have this.
Tried ctrl-r at startup and run a time machine backup - displays the message that backups cannot be restored because the backups were made from a different mac!
Any ideas, the mac seems to be sitting on my desk as a very expensive paper weight!
Any help, much appreciated.

After deciding to upgrade my trusty late 2007 MBP to a new rMBP late 2013 - I wanted to use the migration assistant in mavericks and restore via Time machine. Both Macs are running 10.9.
However after connecting my WD external hardrive (mac version) which is recommended to use with time machine. The migration assistant doesn't seem to detect the HD? It just sits there looking for the source and after 30minutes of waiting,nothing? However in the finder, the HD appears.
I've been researching this online and can't find anything so far which has worked for me.
There were articles relating to a sparse file in the root of the external HD - mine doesn't have this.
Tried ctrl-r at startup and run a time machine backup - displays the message that backups cannot be restored because the backups were made from a different mac!
Any ideas, the mac seems to be sitting on my desk as a very expensive paper weight!
Any help, much appreciated.

Lion Boot Camp Windows Migration Assistant Recovery

"Some features of Mac OS X Lion are not supported for the disk (volume name)" appears during installation"
The disk has a non-standard Boot Camp partition setup, where further partitioning was performed after running Boot Camp Assistant, or the configuration that Boot Camp Assistant created was manually modified
Recovery HD is not needed to install and run OS X Lion
You won't have the on-disk utilities for disk repair
If you use Boot Camp, you can run Boot Camp Assistant after installing OS X Lion to create a new Boot Camp partition, then restore the data from the backup you made of your previous Boot Camp partition.
You can also use the OS X Lion installer from the Mac App Store to create an external bootable drive, complete with a Recovery HD partition. See this article for more details. (404 on lnk). Create Lion Recovery Drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4649
OS X Lion: About Windows Migration Assistant
Last Modified: July 20, 2011
Article: HT4796
Summary
With OS X Lion, you can migrate all of the information from your old Windows PC to your new Mac. Lion automatically transfers your contacts, calendars, and email accounts and puts them in the appropriate applications.
To migrate information from a PC to your Mac
Download to the Windows PC the Windows Migration Assistant installer from here. (broken link)
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4796
About Lion Recovery
What to do if the installer warns that no Recovery HD can be created
Some disk partition configurations may result in the OS X Lion installer reporting that it could not create a Recovery HD. In these situations, even if you are permitted to continue the install, you should quit the install and create an external, bootable OS X Lion hard drive with a Recovery HD, first. You will be able to return to the upgrade to OS X Lion on your computer's boot drive after creating the external Recovery HD.
Your storage device must have at least 13 GB available (after formatting) to install Lion and an Internet Restore partition.
Restart your Mac and hold down the Command key and the R key (Command-R), and keep holding them until the Apple icon appears, indicating that your Mac is starting up.
After the Recovery HD is finished starting up, you should see a desktop with a Mac OS X menu bar and a "Mac OS X Utilities" application window.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
(I would love to see Apple - Support - with a category "Knowledge Base Articles" and from there "Newly added and updated" sub-category, especially with so many new articles being added and updatec)

The Migration Assistant will not migrate Windows.
(35227)

Migration Assistant is broken in 10.9.1

I've just tried setting up my new rMBP using Migration Assistant. Migration Assistant said the new Mac needs to be updated to 10.9.1, which I do. rMBP restarts. Run Migration Assistant on both Macs again. Migration Assistant crashes on both Macs. I then try using a Time Machine backup for the migration. This time, Migration Assistant doesn't see the Time Machine disk. I'm intrigued because Time Machine worked on 10.9, but with the 10.9.1 update appears that the update has broken Migration Assistant.
I rerun the process on my Mac mini and same thing happens.
This is rather frustrating, but seems to be part of a continuing trend of software companies releasing software and updates that are obviously unfinished.
Has anyone else had this issue?

Just back home from a follow-up visit to the Genius Bar on this migration issue (from MacBook Air to new MacBook Pro).
Previous efforts to migrate had taken endless hours and seemed to hang at the 20-mins-remaining mark.
At the store, even after we manually turned off WiFi before connecting the Thunderbolt cable, Migration Assistant seemed to turn WiFi back on and start the migration over WiFi.
In the end, we used the Air (source) in Target Disk mode, which forced the computers to use the Thunderbolt cable. Migration took a little over half an hour, as opposed to 12 hours or more that Migration Assistant was saying earlier when apparently trying to use WiFi.

HT204350 USB Time Machine backup drive not visble in Mavericks Migration Assistant

Hi all,
Yesterday I updated my dad's iMac from Snow Leopard (SL) to Mavericks. Seemed to work ok apart from the fact that turning on iCloud wiped out the calendars. In order to get the calendars back I restored from the most recent SL Time Machine backup. This turned out to be a big mistake! It did get the calendars back but stopped all programs not included in the OS X install to stop working!
I then managed to get a bootable flash drive installer for Mavericks sorted out and installed a fresh copy of Mavericks on the computer with the plan of using Migration Assistant to bring all my dad's files, settings, etc over. The problem is that when I open Migration Assistant and try to migrate from the USB Time Machine backup drive, the drive doesn't show up in the list.
I have also tried restoring from the Time Machine backups that were made straight after the upgrade to Mavericks as I have exported copies of the calendars now and that was the only issue at the time but when I do that the restore fails after about 4.5% progress.
Any help would be amazing as my dad runs two small businesses with the computer and the down time causing quite a few issues.
Thanksin advance!

If you synchronize any of your calendars with a server such as iCloud, disable that synchronization. Quit Calendar.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Calendars
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Reveal
from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a folder selected. Enter Time Machine and restore that folder from the snapshot you want.
Relaunch Calendar and test. Your calendars should be as they were when the snapshot was taken. If you don't sync with a server, stop here. If you do sync some of the calendars with a server, select each one in turn and then select
File ▹ Export ▹ Export…
from the menu bar. You'll get ICS files with the filename extension ".ics". Re-enable sync. Usually, all the calendars you just restored will be deleted. That's not a problem. Create a new calendar on the server for each one you exported and want to sync:
File ▹ New Calendar
Then import the calendar from the corresponding ICS file by double-clicking it. Follow the prompts to import the new events to the calendar you just created. For calendars that you don't want to sync, just import them again. They'll appear in the calendar list under On My Mac.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Why doesn't Migration Assistant recognize my backup disk after rolling back to Mountain Lion from Mavericks?

I rolled back my OS from Mavericks to Mountain Lion and now the Migration Assistant isn't finding my Time Machine backups. Any idea why this is?

One reason may be a different computer name. Check System Preferences > Sharing and make sure your computer name has been the same through all your various OS X iterations.

Migration assistant to transfer data from PC - Windows 7 to MAC Book Pro running Mavericks

Hello Gurus,
I am having toruble using the migration assistant to transfer my data from my PC windows 7 to MAC book pro Mavericks.....
The MAC window for migration assistant keeps searching the source computer..... and windows PC says waiting for the MAC to connect...

I had the same problem, I solved it by turning off the firewall on both the PC and my MacBook Pro. It worked immediately after that. Hope that solves your problem too.

Problems with the Migration assistant from a case-sensitve MacPro/Mavericks to a case-insensitive iMac5K/Yosemite

Hello
My previous Mac was a 2008 8-core 2.8GHz MacPro with Mavericks and a case-sensitive file system.
I received my iMac5K yesterday and attempted a migration.
I was surprised to see that my 1.5TB of data went through the FW800/TB link within 6 hours.
Actually it skipped many things including my Aperture library, my iTunes directoy, my Video/FCP project directory and, most importantly my mail...
This morning I tried to start a new migration assistant using my Mac Pro's USB3 Time Machine backup hooked to the iMac.
The iMac could not see it at all.
What do I perform the wrong way?
Thanks for your help: there's all my life on this Mac Pro, and I want it tranfered to this better, modernersystem.
Mirko

Did you try a Spotlight search?
I actually found the files but everything is all over the place in private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000 (yes I don't know what this is)
/cleanupatstartup/SMSsandboxTools-tmp/users/(user) and there they are.
Seems like a complete wipe, reinstall, and try it all over again is in order.

Migration Assistant in Mavericks is Broken

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