Migration Assistant 'Less than 1 minute remaining' Solution

Hi all..
I have been reading the problems people have been having regarding Migration Assistant and the dreaded 'Less Than 1 Minute Remaining' screen than never goes away and I found a solution for it so you don't have to go through all that!
I recently upgraded my 24" Late 2008 iMac to a new 27" iMac and wanted to bring all my files over to the new machine as most of it is photos and Final Cut Pro plus related editing software!
I did the whole connecting both macs up on the same network and even connected the ethernet cable for faster transfer but after hours of showing promise, it hung up on 1 minute to go. After leaving it for 4 hours, I gave up but here is the best way to do a hassle free transfer.
Back up all the files on your old machine to a hard drive in Time Machine form. I had 320 gigs to do so it may take 4 hours or so to do the back up.
when this is done, disconnect the drive from the old machine. On the new machine, connect the hard drive, open Migration assistant in Utilities and select BACK UP FROM TIME MACHINE!
Mine took about 1 hr 40 mins to complete and it works like a dream.
Sincerely hope this helps people

Press and hold the power button for a few seconds until the power shuts off, then release, wait a few more seconds, and press it again briefly to restart. Test. If the migration wasn't successful, see below.
1. Migration may stall with "Sharing Only" user accounts
2. Back up the old system with Time Machine or Disk Utility and try migrating from the backup.

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Migration tool transferring one minute remaining

Macbook core 2 duo Intel to MBP core 2 duo intel
migration assistant hangs at one minute remaining "transferring files to support applications, under one minute remaining."
Its been saying this from last night to this morning
I have done this 3 times.
Does anyone know why it is doing this or should I manually transfer.

I am having the same issue with my Mac Pro. I am trying to transfer data from a Intel iMac to the new Mac Pro and it freezes with 18 minutes to go. It has been at that point for about four hours now. I read a website that mentioned that this is caused by a spotlight bug and if you disable spotlight on the computer you are transferring the data from before you begin your migration you will not encounter the issue. The problem is that now that I am in the middle of the migration how do I stop it without corrupting the install. The last thing I want to do is re-install everything.

Migration Assistant hanging - 12 minutes to go

I've upgraded by Macbook Pro by putting in a bigger disc. I've tried using migration assistant to transfer the old system - twice now. Firstly from the snow leopard disc, then from the newly installed system.
Both times it hangs saying '12 minutes remaining'. There's nothing odd in the system messages - it just says that the migration started several hours before.
Any suggestions?

I was reading these Migration-Assistant-hanging threads for a while looking for help, and I just wanted to note what ultimately worked for me. I was migrating from a Mac Mini to Mac Pro, both with Intel chips. I attempted it with an Ethernet connection between the two computers. With about a half hour left, the Mac Pro told me the Mac Mini was not responding. I clicked Cancel, and Migration Assistant got hung up on the message "One minute remaining" during the Cancel process. I left it that way for 12 hours and then called AppleCare.
After confirming that I had no menus at the top of the screen to use to Quit, and trying Command-Option Escape without success, they told me to power down the Mac Pro by holding down the Power key for 5-10 seconds. They recommended migrating from my last Time Machine backup, and recommended again connecting the Time Machine to the Mac Pro with either USB or EtherNet cable--not doing it wirelessly. I did this, and I was able to "complete" a migration successfully. But at this point, things were pretty messy on the Mac Pro drive. There were a couple of extra accounts and I had been forced to give my own admin account a name I didn't like. A lot of my music and movies had transferred during the initial, aborted migration, but I wasn't sure that all of it had and it wasn't located in the right account anyway.
So I used Disk Utility to erase the Mac Pro drive and ran through Migration Assistant again, this time using the Ethernet-connected Time Capsule from the start. That seems to have worked quite well.
One final note on this. The Migration Assistant that launches automatically during the setup process for a brand new drive has difficulty recognizing a Time Capsule hooked up through Ethernet. The AppleCare rep told me this is a known issue. So one has to click on the "No thanks, I'll transfer my data later" button, get through the setup, and then launch Migration Assistant from the desktop. Then it finds the Time Capsule no problem.
Hope this helps.

Is the password for Migration assistant different than the apple ID password?

When I attempt to use the migration assistant using the Apple ID usename and password doesn't work. What other password do I need?

If you are transferring material from a PC to a new Mac, see:How to transfer data from a PC to a Mac - Apple Support for Migration Assistant help.

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Thank You

No. Quit the installer, make a copy of Install OS X Mountain Lion.app to another location, since the ill-designed installer deletes itself as part of its installation process, and then try another upgrade. BTW, hopefully you have a bootable backup/clone so you can revert when the installation goes south.

Installation stuck on last screen with less than minute

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Migration assistant has finished copying across my data and I'm now trying to get my Rails apps running again (I was hoping that Migration Assistant would do the biz with RubyGems, etc). At the moment I'm trying to install all required gems, but struggling with hpricot due to the following error;
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Building native extensions. This could take a while...
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Pretend you're in charge of writing Migration Assistant for a minute. How are you going to magically know everything about every piece of software everyone could possibly install in various locations on their system? Would you even bother trying, or would you focus on moving the things that most normal people care about and just assume that anyone who knew how to install their own stuff on the command line can probably figure out how to do it again?

PC went to sleep 3 hours into a migration assistant transfer to MBA.

Is there any way to recover? The situation was complicated by the fact that while the screen was dark on the PC, I must have inadvertently hit the close box. I turned off the sleep function on the PC (too bad the migration assistant didn't remind me, although it did tell me to turn off software update).
The migration assistant on the MBA remained on the whole time. When I restated MA on the PC, I was hoping it would resynch and continue on. It did not.
If I restart it on the Mac, will I get a bunch a duplicate files or will it know where to pick up? Any suggestions?
Thanks.

the system should have gone to sleep only after the migration was finished.
compare folder sizes / folder to verify everything is there.
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I am trying to clone a 250GB hard drive with Mac OS X to another [same model] iMac with a new, blank, 320GB hard drive (bootable).
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Thank you for all your help.
Your information on cloning with Super Duper has been extremely helpful considering I take that route, however this conversation has strayed from my initial or intended question:
From the user's point of view, what are the differences between a fresh install with Migration Assistant, and cloning the entire hard drive?
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Migration assistant has halted at "less than a minute remaining"

Im in the process of transferring my MacBook Pro to a new MacBook Pro.
Since I didn't have a Thunderbolt cable and the ethernet cable is not an option on the new MacBook Pro I have done it wirelessly.
At the start is had 29 hrs to complete…I have been extremely patient until now…this is 2 days into the transfer.
It says it has "less than a minute remaining"…would be great if that were true.
Its been stuck on that now for 3 hrs.
I did note the time remaining kept going up and down during the transfer so I'm hoping this is the case and it will eventually finish.
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I had this problem migrating from my iMac; a late 2009 24in FW800 with Mavericks, to a late 2013 27inch Thunderbolt. Migration Assistant hung at "lass than a minute" for over an hour and change... My back up drives had two F800 interfaces and a USB. I was abe to plug an additional drive into one of the remaining available ports on the back of my Time Capsule drive. This woke up the Time Capsule drive and finished the migration installation process.
I beleive the setting "put Hard Drives to sleep when possible" must have been on by default on the unused OS without my awareness. The action of plugging in an additional drive to the remaining port on my Time Capusle back up drive woke the Time Capsule drive up and then in completed almost imediately. Hope this helps and that any future readers have a BAck Up drive with more than one port and an extra device or drive they can plug into in (Daisy Chain Style) to get the Capusle drive to complete. Good luck!
Turned Out Flawless for Me.

Migrating assistant freezes at less than one minute remaining os x lion

Hi I recently got a macbook pro 13" os x lion, i5 2.4Hz. And i'm using migrating assistant to move my files over from a pc (45gb). The process was fine until it reaches nearly the end where it says cleaning up "less than a minute remaining" and it has been stuck there for ages. My laptop which is the source computer for some reason turned off by itself when it gets to the end of the process. I didnt know how it happened because i was unattened. However the mac was still running. Is it normal? Should i wait or start over again?

http://www.apple.com/support/mac/app-store/contact.html?form=account

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Hi everyone,
I am migrating to a MBP Retina running latest 10.7. I am using migration assistant to import a user from my new Time Capsule. It's stuck on "Less than a minute remaining" for over a few hours that I noticed it. What should I do?
(Yes, I am on Wireless N and I do not own a ethernet adapter)
Any help,suggestion, wait/not wait?
Thanks,
Chester

my recommendation stems mostly from what others have replied to similar posts. I personally think it is probably done, and a hard shut down and restart will probably work. but also see this good reply from WZZZ
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5050660

Migration assistant freezes at "Less than a minute remaining"

I am installing Leopard to a new HD on a PPC G5; during install I have chosen to migrate from my PPC G4 running Leopard via FireWire. It goes along for hours and makes steady progress, until it gets to the very end, it stalls at migrating Application Support with the time remaining saying "Less than a minute", which it has been saying for over 7 hours.
This is the second time I have tried this, the first time I had to do a hard reboot because there is no option to quit during migration. When it restarted it went right back to the "Welcome..." intro. I figured I must have done something (don't know what) wrong, so I did a hard reboot from the installation disk, reformatted the drive and tried it again. Same thing... any idea why this may be happening?

since this is clearly not working I suggest you try migrating user settings only (no applications). If that doesn't work either you'll have to migrate by hand.
see this post for help with this:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6185507

Migration Assistant Stuck at "Less than a minute remaining"

Migrating from old G5 single CPU to dual 2.3 G5. Tiger to Tiger. The dual has a clean install from the setup disk, but no software updates -- I just followed the onscreen instructions regarding when and how to do the migration via Firewire target disk mode.
The migration ran for 2 hours, the minutes counting down just fine, but it stopped with "Less than a minute remaining." There it sits, fans blowing, workday slipping away. Any ideas? Is the migration probably finished? Some lonnnng verification occuring?
Thanks,
Paul Otteson

Wait another hour. If it doesn't work, you may have insufficient space to finish the migration, or a bad firewire cable for or interface on the drive in question.
Consider the steps suggested for PowerPC to Intel migration. They are more likely to work:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350&tstart=0

Migration stalled with "less than a minute remaining"

This issue was discussed back in April, but no definitive solution was found.
I installed Mountain Lion on an older MacBook Pro and all went well until I got to the Setup Assistant after restart. The migration of my files from a Time Machine backup stalled with "less than a minute remaining" while "transferring files to support applications". Apparently this is a known issue that affects older Macs upgrading from Snow Leopard. I have two questions about this:
1. Can anyone suggest a fix or workaround for this problem? In the earlier thread, some people repeated the file transfer several times with exactly the same results. One person evidently had better luck when he started over and deselected everything but Users on the transfer options screen; but it obviously requires alot of extra work on the user's part to reinstall every application.
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Has your Migration Assistant actually crashed? I am restoring my computer from a hard drive failure and the following dialog has been displayed for the last 12 hours. I clicked on the App in the dock to see if it was displaying as crashed, it doesn't appear to be.
I checked the "Get Info" on the Hard Drive Volume, and it is showing a very slow progression of used bytes. I suspect the transfer is still continuing, just very slow as I have so much data. I think it is a matter of quanity of files rather than "file size".
Should be interesting to see in another day or so to see if it completes. :-)

Migration Assistant 'Less than 1 minute remaining' Solution

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