Migration Assistant on MBP stalls, fails

We have a nice new MBP and are trying to move the contents of a PB G4 to it with Migration Assistant.
All works well with FireWire cable and disk mode and initial apparent transfer of data, but the MA process has stalled on both of two attempts, at different points. In one case we left the two connected so the transfer would occur overnight but in the morning we found the old machine with the firewire logo stuck in one spot on the screen (instead of hopping around like it does initially) and the MBP MA message still at 49 minutes remaining.
So we have a new MBP and can't get the old data onto it.
Please share your ideas, thanks.

Sometimes Migration Assistant just doesn't work. For whatever reason it just doesn't copy everything. Anyway, try repairing the disk permissions on your PowerBook and macBook Pro and see if it helps.

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Migration Assistant on MBP not recognising my old (Leopard) Mac

I have a new MBP and I'd like to migrate some of my account from my old Mac running Leopard. When I run Migration Assistant on the MBP it can seem to find the old Mac. They are connected via ethernet and a modem/router and I am able to see and login to the old Mac via Network Folder on the MBP.
Is it possible to use Migration Assistant in this way. What alternatives do I have, obviously doing a TIme Machine isn't an option being Leopard on the old Mac. I could manual take Mail folde, iTunes folder r and Safari bookmarks and forget the rest but figured there's a way to get Migration Assistant to do this.

Did you do software update on your old mac right before you tried this? You need to make sure it's got the latest version of Migration Assistant that it's compatible with.

Migration Assistant - Old MBP Not Finding New MBP

Just bought a new Mac Book Pro. I am using migration assistant to move my old MBP files to the new one using an ethernet cable. My new mac book found the old mac book but the old mac book cannot find the new one (running MA on both laptops). Any suggestions?

Setting-up a new Mac from an old one, its Backups, or a PC

Duplicate Users Migration Assistant on MBP Retinal

Just moving to a new MBP Retinal and unfortunately now have 2 user IDs.
I had to stop the Setup Assistant and restart with the Migration Assistant. Instead of transferring settings, etc to the original ID, it required creation of a second, redudant ID. But all the settings, etc are in the secondary ID.
What do I do? Delete the second one? Transfer contents to the original one first? How?
Background: I cancelled the original transfer because doing it over WiFi was going to take an estimated 255 hours+ (not exaggerating).
After buying a $40 Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter, it then took 4 hours out of an estimated 1.5 <g>, but required the duplicate ID.
There is apparently no way during the migration/setup process to 1) Pause 2) select the transfer method 3) Cancel or back out and 4) transfer settings to an existing ID.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can provide some help.

Yes, that is the unfortunate way MA works in contrast to SA. The first one doesn't have these issues since it gets the Mac in a totally blank state so it can create whatever IDs it needs. But MA gets an already preconfigure unit and can't overwrite what's already in there. So you can check and confirn that all your stuff is indeed in the second ID and then purge the first.
Only way for SA to run again would require reinstalling the Mac from scratch. And I've always had the niggling suspicion that the reinstaller will only put in the standard base system. Not all the extra goodies you get with a new Mac, such as iLife. (Note that in all my Mac OS X Macs dating back to the year 2000, never had to do a complete bare drive install. Always had the fortune of migrating and not losing any of my fast accumulating stuff)

MIgration Assistant Stalls out on 'Searching for Disk...'

The main problem here is, I reinstalled Snow Leopard after some acting up by the OS. Backed up ON my main HD and tried to use Migration Assistant to restore the backup. AS of now, every time I load up Migration Assistant, it just stalls on 'Searching for Disk...' and never finds a backup.
I'll try and make a long story short, my optical drive was acting up so I took it in to the Genius Bar. Luckily, they had a new one in stock and replaced it on the spot. Upon getting my MacBook Pro (2009) back, everything was acting crazy. Lagging, freezing, etc. The genius told me it was normal that things start acting up after installing new hardware and that all I had to do was reinstall Snow Leopard and that before installation, it would ask me if I wanted to backup all my data and that once it was re-installed it would automatically come restore to its previous form. Here's where I think things got a little screwy...
I was running Snow Leopard but unfortunately when I installed it, it was from a friend's 'family installation' pack, so I didn't have the installation CD at hand. Anxious to get things fixed, I put in my original installation disc that came with my MBP. Looking back, it should've been obvious that downgrading might cause some problems. Booted to disk and I went on to reinstall. Right before the reinstall it asked me if I wanted to backup all my data to restore once the installation was done. Sure enough, it seemed to have worked so I figured all was going well.
The installation finished and asked me if I wanted to restore from a backup. Of course, hitting yes only gave me an error saying that the backup was created on a newer OS and that I wouldn't be able to restore it on an older OS. I was bummed out but it made sense. Fast forward another day: I call my friend and ask to borrow his Snow Leopard installation disc again. I install it, hoping to see the same, "Restore from Backup" screen at some point, but nothing.
I noticed right away that I only had 16 GB of HD space left (what it was before any of this madness) but everything looked as if it was brand new. After some clicking around through some folders I found the old backup within some folders so I figured that everything worked fine and Migration Assistant would be a quick and easy fix. From here on, Migration Assistant can never seem to get past the loading screen. All I see is, "Searching for Disk" and an eternally spinning circle.
Am I missing something? I've repaired disk partitions and done plenty of searching online. Am I just going to have to setup everything manually again? Thanks.
-Raul

Wow. Sorry, but you've made a major mess.
I was running Snow Leopard but unfortunately when I installed it, it was from a friend's 'family installation' pack,
That's a violation of the license. The +*family pack+* may be installed on up to 5 Macs in the same household. You need to buy your own copy of Snow Leopard.
It sounds like the prompt you got form the Leopard disc was to +Preserve Users and settings.+ That's an +Archive and Install+ of Leopard. If so, there should be a +Previous System ...+ folder at the top level of your HD. If so, that's where you found your backed-up stuff.
The +Restore System From Backup+ option on the DVD is to restore from Time Machine backups, and it doesn't sound like you've ever made any.
And you cannot use +Migration Assistant+ on that folder. It works to transfer from one Mac (or Time Machine or "clone" backups of one), to a different one.
If that's what you did, you'll have to install Snow Leopard over Leopard (that won't disturb anything else). When you start up, you'll have Snow Leopard and little else. You'll have to copy what you need from the +Previous System+ folder.
|
Once this is sorted out, in addition to buying Snow Leopard, you really should start making regular backups of your system. See the [Time Machine Tutorial|http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics] and perhaps browse [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), and/or Kappy's post on [Basic Backup|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12366915#12366915].

Migration Assistant - Problems copying 2009 MacBook Pro data to new MacBook Pro

Purchased new MacBook Pro and tried to copy old MacBook Pro (circa 2009) data to new one using migration assistant. It stalled after about 20 hours via wireless. My question is how can I restore the new machine to factory settings and start over? Or is there a better way to copy the remaining files/applications? Please note that I've tried to run migration assistant again and it keeps exiting to login screen on the new MacBook Pro - after connection is made.

How much RAM does it have?
In spite of what Apple says, 4GB is not practically adequate with the new 64-bit systems (Lion and successors). All MBPs from Early 2011 forward, with user-installable RAM SO-DIMMs, can take up to 16GB with no problems and with greatly enhanced performance.
And if you still persist in running the systems with 4GB, make sure there's ample paging space on the HDD.

Migrated user not showing up after migration assistant.

I had to reformat my hardrive on iMac. When I did I installed Mountain Lion instead of Lion which was on it previously. I migrated all files/user id from Time Machine using the Migration Assistant. But now I can't see my old user at login or in User's and Groups. The files are there but I can't access them without being able to login or at least give my new user permission.
How can I get to the old user?
I enabled Root User and there seems to be an "unknown user". After this an option to log into "other" user came up at log in, but my attempts at a password and name to log in failed. This "other" user and the "unknown user" are NOT showing in Users and Groups.
Please help!

We don't recommend to use Migration Assistant because it sometimes fails, like in this case.
If you don't want problems, go with the long way: erase the drive, reinstall OS X and restore the backup during Setup Assistant:
1. Hold Command and R keys while your Mac is starting to start up into Recovery, and open Disk Utility.
2. Select Macintosh HD in the sidebar (or your OS X partition), go to Erase tab and erase the drive.
3. Close Disk Utility and reinstall OS X.
4. When the installation finishes, Setup Assistant will show up, so follow its steps. It will ask you to restore data from a backup or another backup, so plug your Time Machine backup to the Mac (or a Mac) and follow the steps. The only user will contain the transferred data.
If you want more information about Setup Assistant > http://pondini.org/OSX/SetupLion.html

Migration Assistant doesn't recognize old iMac OSX

I just bought a new iMac 20 inch running Tiger. In the migration assistant (first initial setup), it asks if I would like to transfer files and settings from an old iMac using a FireWire cable (I do). After it prompts me, I boot my "old" iMac (PowerPC G4 running OS 10.2.8) in FireWire Target Disk Mode (pressing "T" while restarting). Then connect the FireWire cable from my old iMac to the new iMac. The migration assistant says that OSX is not installed on my "old" computer (which it is).
I've done some research on this forum about this topic. I've checked if my old Mac needs a firmware update (it doesn't). How can I fix this problem - I would really like to run the migration assistant from the get-go. Any assistance would be very appreciated. Thanks.
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.4)

One thing I don't know if it is relevant, but I found having the same username already created on my new machine when I ran the migration assistant caused it to fail.
If you haven't created anything essential on your new Mac, run the restore disks over again, and create an alternative user name:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61802
Once that is done, then try to run the Migration Assistant from the Applications -> Utilities folder, and then login the old username and delete the new one.

Migration Assistant fails after showing 157 KB or 0 KB to transfer

I spent 4 days trying to get OS X Migration Assistant to successfully migrate between two desktop machines, both running Mavericks 10.9.3.
The two machines were connected by an ethernet cable, and all migrations would fail after 16-24 hours, with the progress bar stalling out at "Less than one minute remaining".
Before every failed transfer, Migration Assistant would inaccurately show "157 KB selected" for transfer if the "Computer & Network Settings" option was checked, or "0 KB selected" for transfer if only the "Applications" or "Documents & Data" options were checked.
I finally realized that the migrations were failing because I was opening and clicking through Migration Assistant on both the source and target machines at around the same time.
The eventual solution was to open Migration Assistant on the source machine first, and click through as far as I could until the source machine was actively looking for other machines on the network.
As long as I waited until then to open Migration Assistant on the target machine, it would correctly calculate the size of the files to be transferred and the migration would succeed.
So, the order in which you open Migration Assistant seems to make a big difference: source first, then target.
My problem is solved, but only after several days of hassle, so I wanted to post this in case other people had a similar issue.
(I tried many suggested fixes that did not work, included reinstalling OS X on the target machine, running disk repair and fixing permissions on both source and target, changing file sharing on the source machine to include the whole drive, trying to migrate Applications and Documents & Data separately, turning off wifi before the transfer, etc.)

Thanks for posting this. I was having the same problem. You saved me hours, maybe days, of frustration!

Migration assistant fails to *find* machine

Very simple, thought I'd fire it up before going to sleep and have a baseline to tune from in the morning. No such luck -- just a band-new 10.5.7 MBP seeking to slurp from a couple year old 10.5.7 Core2Duo iMac. I haven't any FW800 small-port cables, but neither on a dedicated point-to-point ethernet nor on the regular network does migration ***'t get past "looking for other machines" stage after specifying who is sending and who is receiving. I presume this is either a sign I shouldn't bother with it or some completely braindead thing done on my part.

Thanks, Pondini, but the Time Machine disk passes the Disk Utility repairs and only the spinning wheel was visible under both the Setup Assistant and the Migration Assistant.
I now have some good news, and some bad.
First the good news: Lion's Migration Assistant offers the option to copy user (and other) files from the previous OSX disk, not just the Time Machine disk. If this option was already in Snow Leopard, then I missed it.
Now the bad news..
I spent several hours reading (Pondini's and others') suggestions to ensure that my Time Machine is as seamless as possible, namely, for the next backup to be incremental. No luck: all user data are copied. Until the interface of Time Machine stops trying so hard to shield us naive users from making decisions on our own, one idea is to keep the iPod and pictures/video collection backed-up by the straight-forward rsync. Then whether Time Machine is really incremental will not matter, and in any case a spare copy of the documents you wrote by hand is nice in case the some blocks of the disk fail.
But I may have been the one who messed it. In Preferrences \ Time Machine \ Options... I excluded all users except the user "Admin" who restored the user accounts. The idea was to test first whether the mildest user will get a full backup. It may be that Time Machine does not look in the history to see if a given file or set of files already have some copy in the past. If a file does not exist in the very last backup, it is saved to the Time Machine disk.
If you're reading this and are keen on an incremental backup, try this: restore your user accounts using a user Admin, but do not start to backup until after the accounts are restored. Will the backup afterwards be incremental?

Migration to 2008 MBP Fails

Hey all,
I just received my new 15 inch MacBook Pro and this thing is awesome. Coming from a late 2006 macbook to this thing is completely different.
I'm having serious migration issues. I was away from my other equipment when I set it up so I just created a dummy account so that I could use the migration assistant later on. I don't have a FW800 cable so I first used an ethernet to my old macbook (10.5.5 + All Updates) and with around 5 minutes to go a message comes up saying that the old mac has lost connection and any attempts to continue fail. So I setup a wireless network on the MBP for the MB to connect to and tried the migration again but it gets to around 4 minutes and loses connection again. I then decided to use my time machine backup to migrate from and once again fails with the same connection fault even though its not even a mac and is USB! My old mac is in perfect working condition, DIsk Utility has found no problems with it at all. The only thing I can think of doing is performing a clean install and migrating from time machine during setup instead of setting up a dummy admin account first.
Has anyone else had this or a similar problem? Any tips?
This is really annoying and is making this purchase less exciting every day.

And I stand by my statement. I can't tell you how many times many others have successfully migrated from an old Mac to a new one without a hitch. Yes, sometimes problems occur and this is what the forums are designed to help. However, it would be incorrect to make a blanket statement that one should always avoid using migration assistant to copy over files. Most of the time, it works just fine. On the off chance that it does not, it is no big deal to either delete the offending files or re-install as needed. On the majority of times that the Migration Assistant works as advertised, it is a HUGE time saver in setting up a new Mac.

New MBP and Migration Assistant

I just ran Migration Assistant on my new MBP bringing over everything from my old iBook. I just noticed that the iLife apps are the same versions from my iBook. Isn't Migration Assistant supposed to account for that, and flag the older apps? Is there anyway I can download and install the iLife apps that came with my MBP?

Thanks for the quick response. I have reinstalled the Application DVD that came with the MBP. The app versions that are loaded are..
iMovie 5.0.2 (111)
iPhoto 09 version 8.1 (415)
GarageBand 09 version 5.1 (398)
iDVD version 7.0.4 (1116)
iWeb 09 version 3.0.1 (9B33)
Are these correct? Seems iMovie is wrong. The reason I even discovered this was I went to use the iSight camera with iMovie, but it's not available. I also wonder about iChat, as the version installed is 4.0.8 (619). Doesn't the MBP come with iChat AV ?
any help appreciated!

Missing hard drive space after failed migration assistant transfer

When I first got my 13" macbook pro (about a month ago), I attempted to use Migration Assistant to move my files from my old 15" MBP. After starting the transfer, my old MBP locked up (or so I thought) & I had to quit the process. When I looked to see if anything transfered to the 13", I couldn't find anything, but there was hard drive space, maybe about 15 GB, missing. I looked everywhere I knew to look, in all folders all over my computer but came up emptyhanded. Although I've been using macs for years, I have little knowledge of all the inner workings/hidden files, etc. so I've reached the end of my abilities. I've searched all over & have been unable to find an answer. I had originally decided to just let it go & deal with a few missing gigabytes, but I just have to know what's going on. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Problem solved! Ran Disk Utility not in recover mode again, and it identified that the logical size wasn't right. Repair Disk while logged in - and at the upper level "Macintosh HD" on the left sidebar - fixed the issue, and I'm going to not attempt to run Boot Camp again for a while just in case :-p

Error "The Connection Failed" in Time Machine, Migration Assistant and Restore From DVD

I am receiving this error when trying to connect to my Time Machine Backup in my Time capsule. I input the proper password to access my Time Capsule and It returns me to the screen with the caption "The connection failed" under the Time Capsule name in the "Select your Disk" screen. What would cause this error. I am connecting via WIFI (AirPort) and have full signal. I am using Mac OSX 10.6.8
I recently had my 1TB hard drive replaced and I am attempting to restore using Time Machine, migration assistant or from the startup dvd (tried multiple ways, no success). The initial setup of mac OSX 10.6 would not let me connect or other attempts after erasing hard drive and reinstalling OSX from disk.
Worked on it all weekend and don't have enough beer to drown the frustration, any help is appreciated.

You are correct TM is not at all easy to do a full restore.
To answer your question: Yes TM disk does show up in finder.
After my initial startup setup I was able to start TM and access all my previous backups. I migrated some files and was able grab the data from finder. Not satisfied with that I tried to do a restore to that previous date, to no success. I then erased the HD and reinstalled OSx and tried again from the setup screen. That didn't work, sulked over some beers. I then tired with Migration assistant...same result (more beer).
In starting TM after trying MA, only one backup was showing in the Star screen (today). None of my previous backups were showing. Since exiting TM it has been "Making Backup Disk Available" ( xGB of 6.29GB). Considering the size, I can only assume that these are my previous backups.
I have reviewed Pondini's posts, FAQs, and tutorials. I am a little scared to try and locate the drives through Terminal as in Pondini's TS #6 guide. If I can get my previous backups to show up, I will be happy with dragging files from Finder to restore my data and slowly work at restoring my settings/applications.

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.

Migration Assistant on MBP stalls, fails

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