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.

Similar Messages

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:

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 can't see my USB ext HD for Time Machine!

Here is a question for Pondini!
I've read through many of the threads here, including Pondini's tutorials on how to set-up Time Machine, use Migration Assistant, etc. Alas, I'm not a technical person and have hit a wall.
Here's the scenario:
Last week my iMac running Mountain Lion crashed. The hard drive was initially "repaired" using Recovery, erasing all data then restoring the drive from Time Machine backups stored on a Hitachi 2TB Touro USB3 external HD. But soon after the system froze again and a 2nd restore did not work. I concluded that my almost 5 year old HD was gone.
Where I stand now is that the iMac's HD has been replaced with a new one which came preinstalled with Snow Leopard. I absolutely want (need!) to restored my Mac from Time Machine to get back all my settings and info.
During the iMac first boot Setup Assistant did NOT see the external hard drive even though they are connected properly. (Note: My older iMac is undoubtedly USB2 but the external HD is backwards-compatible USB3. THAT is the connection, from the external HD directly into the back of the Mac. It is mounted on my desktop and files can be accessed through Finder.) So I then proceeded to set-up my "new" computer with basic settings, which is how I came to see my external HD was properly mounted and connected. I also upgraded the OS on this new HD to Mountain Lion so it would be the same as my most recent Time Machine back-ups.
Since then I have tried using Migration Assistant to migrate from Time Machine on my external drive but it still does not recognize any drives - Migration Assistant just searches endlessly for other computers. Argh! I've tried all the tips I've read in these forums and none have helped. I scanned my external drive for errors using disk utility but none were found.
On my external drive there is a folder in the root called Backups.backupdb. Double-clicking it simply opens the folder in Finder, to reveal folders with names familiar to me - the previous HDs computer name, then a bunch of dated folders within that, including a lone file called 2012-08-17-062839.inProgress. I suppose my HD may have died while backing up to Time Machine.
WHAT do I do?
Let's say the worst case scenario is that I cannot use these Time Machine backups. Is there any way to root through them for data I can hand-copy to my iMac's new internal drive? It would be grueling but at least it's something. How can I retrieve years of email? Luckily photos, music, videos, etc were backed up manually into a separate folder (also in the root of my external drive).
THANK YOU!!
Danielle

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 you had
- if Setup Assistant fails, use the recovery partition for system restore
- Use Recovery Disk Assistant http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433 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.

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 form a Firewire drive back to a MBP

Hi
My MBP has been returned for a replacement (3rd Time) and I have made a complete clone of the hard drive with on a fire wire drive. I would like to know if I can use migration assistant to transfer my details using the firewire drive. I don't want to do a complete system transfer, but only my settings etc like migration assistant does it. I cannot loose e-mails and reinstall everything this time round again...
Please advise.
Regards
Mike

If you made a clone of the drive, why not just clone it back on the repaired MBP. That way you would be sure all your files, settings etc. are on your new computer. The Migration Assistant will miss some files. I frequently lose monitor profiles and many apps, such Adobe CS, are broken by MA and need to be reinstalled.

Problems using Migration Assistant from Tiger to Snow Leopard

I want to scavenge files and apps from a Power Mac G4 (PowerMac3,5) running Tiger 10.4.11 before I turn it out to pasture. Most of them were migrated years ago to another system and have been updated and upgraded over the years, but a few apps have no modern equivalent. Now I want to do one last "pull" to pick up anything left behind all those years ago, particularly apps for which the install discs are in deep storage at best and possibly discarded.
I'm trying to use Migration Assistant in a nearly virgin Snow Leopard 10.6.8 system (installed fresh from 10.6.3 retail optical disc, updated over the network, lightly tested). It has a single admin account, no other user accounts.
Possible complicating factors: the Snow Leopard system is Server running under Parallels 10.1.4 on Yosemite 10.10.2 on an Early 2008 Mac Pro (MacPro3,1) with third-party USB3 controller in a PCI slot.
At present, I'm using a portable drive with both FW and USB interfaces as an intermediate storage (FW on the G4 to clone the system drive, USB on the Mac Pro to connect it to the virtual machine). SL sees the drive just fine, can copy files from it, and can even run apps from it. Migration Assistant sees the drive and offers to migrate from it.
Two problems:
1. No matter what user(s) I select for migration, Migration Assistant tells me it is a duplicate account. Proposing an account name never used before does not help. As a result, no user files can be migrated. (Obviously, I could copy them in other ways, but I think MA should do a more thorough job.)
2. Migration Assistant offers to migrate absolutely no applications. Even applications that SL will run from the drive cannot be migrated. (Some are PPC apps, but SL will run them via Rosetta. Others are Universal apps.)
Am I expecting too much of Migration Assistant?
Is the Migration Assistant shipped with SL Server (and updated through Software Update) not capable of running under SL Server?
Should SL MA refuse to migrate any applications from a Power Mac, even Universal applications?
Am I missing something obvious?
Is there key information I have omitted?

markwmsn wrote:
...It's not the twenty bucks, it's the principle of the thing.
Not sure what you meant by that statement. Although this "principle" may be more important to you than the twenty bucks, I know that my time is worth more to me than your twenty bucks!
What apps are you using?
markwmsn wrote:
I was able to install Snow Leopard (client) in a partition, and it was able to migrate users and many applications from the G4 clone on the portable drive. Some of the apps even run.
Then I went back to my SL Server virtual machine and tried to migrate FROM the SL client partition. Migration Assistant showed the same symptoms as importing from the clone directly (no apps offered, bogus "dup user" errors). I am forced to conclude that either (a) Migration Assistant 3.0.4/1.1 is broken when run on SL Server or (b) my new SL Server installation is broken. I'm either going to have to boot back and forth to run the old apps or find their installation media and reinstall them in my SL Server virtual machine.
Even worse, I realized that one of the antique programs I still haven't dug everything out of is a Classic application that had to be kludged to survive Y2K!
Thanks again, MIchaelLAX.
Anybody else have any clever ideas?
So, glad to see that Migration Assistant did work for you in Snow Leopard...
More clever ideas:
Install Snow Leopard client in Parallels and use its Migration Assistant:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1365439
Here is a recent post I assembled for running Classic apps on Intel Macs:
With the newer Intel Macs, you have to run a Classic emulator such as SheepShaver, which requires you to extract the Mac ROMs from your older Classic Mac and then install Mac OS 9.
A related program is Chubby Bunny, which comes bundled with all of that included (google the term "Classic-On-Intel v 4.0.1 chubby bunny").
More information on SheepShaver:
http://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/sheepshaver_mac_os_x_setup
and
http://www.everymac.com/mac-answers/mac-os-9-classic-support-faq/run-macos-9-on- intel-macs.html
and more information about Chubby Bunny:
http://www.macwindows.com/OS9_on_Intel_Mac.html#092408b
and
http://hackthemac.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/chubby-bunny-old-virtual-machine.html
Here is the Classic CD-ROM version of RISK II running in SheepShaver on my Lion Mac Mini:
[click on image to enlarge]

Migration Assistant crash

I was trying to transfer some files using Migration assistant from EMAC to new IBook. Migration didn't allow me to take just the files I wanted but grabbed everything from EMAC so I tried to stop it by pulling the firewire plug out of the Emac. Really really dumb.
EMAC said to restart computer but always comes back to the same message on a grey screen (restart computer.)
Ran apple hardware test and everything passed but still can't get passed restart request.
Any suggestions?

David Weser,
Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
Have you unplugged the Firewire cable from the eMac?
I'd try unplugging the power cord from the side of the eMac for 15 to 30 minutes, also unplug all peripherals, then reattach the power cord only and try to restart.
Will your eMac will start in Safe Mode?
The restart message text indicates a kernel panic on startup. My guess (I'm not sure) is that the migration assitiant sets up an invisible file at the root directory indicating that it's running and would normally remove that file on a sucessful completation. When your eMac tries to restart it sees the file, tries to resume the broken migration, and drops into the kernel panic. If that's the case, booting into single-user mode should allow you to remove the file, but it's definitely not advisable to try that blindly. I'll see if I can turn up some help on how to clean up after a failed migration.

Migration assistant doesn't migrate all user files

I Wanted to do a semi clean install, so I decided to erase everything and install a fresh OS X Yosemite.
i Used migration assistance to only migrate my user account and all its files. Everything seemed to work fine, until I realized I was missing things. Some fonts were not copied over (/User/name/Library/Fonts) and most of my music was not copied over (~/Music/iTunes etc.). The only music that seemed to transfer were ones I purchased from iTunes or imported recently (with the latest iTunes). I got fed up with the entire process and didn't do any more investigation or debugging and am now doing a full restore from time machine. Luckily I have two time machine backups... Can't always assume everything will go correctly (one time machine is stuffed as it was preparing to backup my new installation with lost user files).
has anyone else had the same problems?
As a note I was able to locate those fonts manually on one of the time machine backups but it said the links we broken (they must be aliases) but since I knew the absolute path I could find them. Maybe that's part of the problem? Also I wonder if user permissions (eg ownership) could affect the restore user account process...
Ps: Apple this site ***** on my iPad mini. Fonts are way too small!

I did exactly that
If so, that would have been Setup Assistant, not Migration Assistant. From the sound of it, I'm not so certain that is what you did. They are very similar, but may produce different results. Setup Assistant appears on the first boot of the new Mac. It is generally far more problem free than Migration Assistant. If you select the option to migrate later you get MA. Have you checked to see if you don't now have another User where all your settings now reside. This can be the result of using MA.
If you didn't use SA on the first boot, it might be far less time consuming and aggravating to simply reinstall the OS and the bundled apps. This will produce a brand new option to use SA on the first boot.

Migration assistant can't see time machine disk

New hard drive to replace broken one - Migration Assistant doesn't see the external hard drive with my time machine backup, even though it mounts to the desktop... Anyone else had this problem? Using a MacBook pro with OSX 10.8.4

Here are the articles I have on Migration Assistant. None of them had the answer to your problem (or at least I couldn't find it). Check what you did versus the recommendations in the articles is about the best I can offer.
Migration Assistant
Migration Assistant (2)
Migration Assistant – Tips and Tricks

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.

Force migration assistant to recognize time machine backup

I was trying to reformat Bootcamp partition and it reformated an attached external hard drive with my Time Machine backup on it and my internal hard drive that I boot from. I have professionally gotten the Time Machine backup recovered but it is not recognize by Migration Assistant or Time Machine so that it will restore my whole computer or at least transfer my account folder back to my reinstalled internal hard drive. I have 20 years of stuff locked in that Time machine backup and really need it back.

ahlquist wrote:
There are a lot of extra named files broken out in addition to the main folders (which look the same) that have 0-k in them and it looks like they were "links" or something like that.
Yup. Those are (or were) "hard links" (sort of like extra-fancy aliases) that are the key to how Time Machine can back up only changes, but still have every backup be, in effect, a full one. See How Time Machine works its Magic if you're interested in an overview of the details.
I'm very surprised you could see those via the Browse option.
You might try repairing the drive, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. I doubt it will help, but it's worth a shot.
I don't know if deleting the broken links will help or not.
is it safe to assume the links are messed up and I will have to recover the files manually?
It sure sounds like it.
If so, I'd put two Finder windows side-by-side; your current system and the most recent recovered backup, in List view, so you can see the contents more easily.
Start with /Users/<your home folder> unless you know you'd put stuff elsewhere.
Compare the two, and copy what's different/missing from the backups to your system. In some cases, you'll have to delete the (probably empty) folders on your system first. Note that you can't delete the "default" folders (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc.), so you'll have to copy the contents instead. This will be quite tedious, I'm afraid.
Then, if you can tell that things are missing, look in the previous backup for them. You might have to go back several backups for some, and may not find all the missing items anywhere.
I am most interested in documents, pictures, movies, mail and quicken files.
Assuming you hadn't moved them, docs will be in your Documents folder, iPhoto in your Pictures folder, Movies in your movies folder. Be especially careful with your iPhoto Library. Copy it all at once; it's like a database, and can't be copied in pieces.
For Mail and some other common things, see #28 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
I don't use Quicken, and don't know where it puts things. For that or other apps whose data you can't find, either check with the maker, or start the app. See if it shows a default location; if not, create a bit of data, then go hunting for a file/folder with a name similar to the app and/or with a current creation or modified date. They'll probably be somewhere in your Documents folder, your /Library folder, or your /Library/Application Support folder.
When this is done, you'll have learned a whole lot about how OSX organizes things.
Keep us posted.

HT4889 Migration assistant doesn't see my 3TB Time machine it just keeps looking for other computers

I just did a clean install of Mountain Lion on my iMac and Migration Assistant doesn't seem to see my 3TB Time Machine. It continuously looks for other computers, and nothing else. I know the files work because I loaded it on my other MBP and it sees them just fine? am I just inpatient or is something wrong?

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.

How Much Control Do You Hove Over Migration Assistant?

I am finally getting around to installing Leopard and plan to do an Erase and Install to a partition on my firewire external drive and tinker with things over there before copying that image via SuperDuper to my iBook. In the meantime I can continue using Tiger for my day to day activities without interruption.
How much control do I have over what Migration Assistant moves? I definitely want to move my documents photos and music, but because I have a corrupted user account and at least one broken app (QuickTime - I've tried fixing this numerous times without success and I'm tired of messing with it), I don't want to move either the affected account or the broken apps, which are in all accounts, because I would just be replicating these problems in Leopard. Obviously reinstalling all of the app because of a couple that are messed up is a little extreme, but this also gives me a chance to eliminate those apps I'm actually not using on a regular basis.
Also I will always have a SuperDuper backup of my latest Tiger image to refer to as I boot into Leopard for some shakedown testing.
-Bill

Migration Assistant doesn't give you THAT much flexibility. you can choose to migrate whole user accounts and/or all applications. if you want finder control you have to migrate things by hand. use this post as a guide
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6185507

Migration Assistant - 3 Computers?

Hello all,
I have a question regarding the Migration Assistant process. So, before I get into the problem, let me identify all three of the computers.
PowerPC iMac with iSight - No longer works, but has the most important account on it. We are getting a computer repairman to migrate the account from this computer to the second computer at a later time.OS: Most recent version of Leopard
Mid-2010 iMac - Was bought used, but the computer should be empty. This will be the "host" computer. We want to move all of the accounts over to this one.OS: Most recent Snow Leopard
Early 2007 iMac - This computer is working, and has THREE other accounts we want to move over to the host computer. However, they are less important than the one account on the PowerPC. OS: Most recent Snow Leopard
My concern is that if I were to migrate the accounts from the Early 2007 iMac over to the host iMac today, and our computer repairman came out later to move the account from the broken iMac to the host computer, would there be any kind of reset needed? I want to make sure that the accounts on the 2007 iMac can be moved over to the host iMac without conflicting with the account on the PowerPC iMac.
Also note that the PowerPC won't boot for longer than 30 seconds, so I imagine there must be a complicated procedure involved in moving the account over to the host computer. This account on the PPC would be the primary account.
Finally, I did note the Migration Assistant patch updates from Apple for Leopard and Snow Leopard. I plan to install the Snow Leopard one to the 2007 iMac today. Will the Leopard one be needed on the host computer though?
I hope I was specific enough... if you need any clarification, please let me know. I will reply as quickly as possible. Thank you for your time!
-Justin

You can run Migration Assistant as often as necessary, so you should be able to migrate all the user accounts you want, in any order you want, with a couple of restrictions:
It will not "merge" any accounts; each will be transferred separately, so it sounds like you'll end up with 4 or 5 different user accounts.
It will not transfer an account with the same "short user name" (same as the home folder name) as one that already exists. It can, however, rename one of them and continue the transfer. See the last sample in the pink Migrating User Acounts box of Using Migration Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard for details.
As you'll see in the pink Migrating Applications box there, it won't transfer apps that already exist (with the exact same names in the exact same locations), so as long as you start with an up-to-date version of Snow Leopard, you'll keep the default Snow Leopard Apple apps.
Other Apple apps, such as iWork and iLife, and 3rd-party apps follow the same rules; so if you elect to transfer apps, and have different versions on different Macs, be careful to do the most recent ones first. If in doubt, you may want to un-check the Apps box and reinstall from the original discs.
Your best bet will be to start the new/used Mac from a Snow Leopard Install disc (either the one that came with it or a Retail version), erase the internal HD, and install OSX. That way, you'll be sure there aren't any nasty surprises left over from the previous owner.
When it starts up again, use Setup Assistant to do the first set of transfers, not Migration Assistant. (See Using Setup Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard.) That will reduce the number of user accounts you end up with by one, and possibly avoid some of the things in Problems after using Migration Assistant

Migration Assistant is broken in 10.9.1

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