Migration Assistant puzzle

I've run Migration Assistant several times transferring users from my Powerbook G4, to the G4 "salad bowl" then to the squarish 20 inch iMac G5 then to the 15 inch Powerbook after the screen replacement for dots and a restore back to iMac after the power supply in iMac died. All these migrations were perfectly fine in the past without any problems.
Today a friend who has one of the new 24 inch iMacs and just got a brand new MacBook wanted to transfer his user stuff over. Since I've successfully done so in the past on my computers, I offered to help. Got to the startup screen where it says to hook up the firewire cable and do the T key thing on restart.
The MacBook found the drive on the other computer and I clicked to start the process. It failed within a minute saying the process could not continue. I tried rebooting with the T key thing again a couple more times and then gave up going through the rest of the setup process. After I got to the desktop, I rebooted the laptop to find it working OK, so I attempted to run the Migration Assistant again from the Utility Folder.
Back to the T key on the iMac for Firewire mode again. MacBook finds the drive and tells me there is 83GB of data to transfer over. I checked all the items to transfer, user accounts and so on. Transfer starts and runs for an hour and a half. It completes. I reboot and check to see if everything is OK.
Ooops! The main account indeed has been established on the MacBook, Applications which were not on the MacBook (Firefox, etc) have correctly been transferred over to the MacBook. They run fine. However, - here's the problem - None of the data has been brought over. Address Book does not have any of his addresses. Only a Documents folder without any of his data. No movies, pictures, music folders you see normally when you bring up a finder window. The absence of those folders?
Strange thing is that the size of used space on the MacBook disk has decreased by 83GB, so it appears the data is someplace because it took the hour and a half to transfer across - but where?
Another strange thing. Maybe this helps. An entry under the "users" pane of system pref. A group user (what is that?) was created with his dot Mac user name. Maybe I typed something wrong someplace?
. The iMac is version 10.5.4 and the MacBook is 10.5.2 Maybe I should have upgraded the software to 10.5.4 before attempting the Migration Assistant?
What should I do now?
Any ideas?
ByronUnderscoreint aaaaatttt mmmmmaacccccdoootcccccooommm

good luck with that. post back if it still doesn't work. the main thing is to >trasnfer the home directory so that it shows up in /Users.
Looks like it will just have to be luck. No clue how to Make that happen, just take a Chance on copy again, no step by step kind of sure way to guarantee? Like starting from a certain screen this way will make it happen?
The "group" thing totally confused me. Never seen that kind of thing happen when I did it before. Didn't know there could be a "group" user whatever that means as far as getting to the data. I wonder if this all has something to do with bad Unix user permissions. Is there a possibility of fixing things through 'repair permissions'? Like the Music, Movies and pictures folders are marked as invisible somehow because Michael doesn't have permission to access? The GB count shows the data is there someplace. Some terminal command I could run to test the theory? But I wouldn't know what to do from the command line to fix. Maybe a retry is best, but how to get rid of all the data that can't be found? Of course, I have to wait for Michael to return from the weekend since he has the MacBook there.
Byron

Similar Messages

Backup will not restore with migration assistant.

This is long and complicated but here goes. Had a 10.5 machine PPC that was backing up to a time capsule. IMac blew out PS so was toast. Took it home and took another iMac 10.5 machine that had a bad HD. Put new HD into that machine and installed 10.6 and then ran migration assistandt from the old iMac HD drive from the unit with the bad PS. The restored iMac with the new HD was a perfect close of the older iMac and everything was perfect. Took to customer site and they were happy. Time machine started backing up again to the same time capsule as before. It created a new backup image on the time capsule with the EXACT SAME NAME as the older iMac had. I did not know that until a year later when the new hard drive in the rebuilt iMac failed. I took a newer iMac of the Intel variety with 10.7 on it to the customer site. I told migration assistant to restore from the time capsule users and data file. I di not want it to restgore programs since I knew the ones on the newer iMac where newer versions and probably not compatible. Restore seemed to go just fine. Users were all there and desktop looked the same as the older iMac with the dead hard drive. I had to install a printer driver but all appeared okay. Customer called the day later and said all files for pages and numbers and address book appeared a year old at the newest. See where this is going.
I went to the site and started looking at the backup files on the time capsule drive. Taht is when I noticed that two exact backup named files existed. So I started drilling down through them ( Not using time machine casues it only had 1 day history on it ) and looked at the dates of the files. Sure enough, one of the backup images had files that had all ended a year ago when the original iMac blew out the PS and the other backup file with an identical name had files much more current in the current month and year. Simple I said to myself. I just happended to pick the older file to restore from. So I renamed the older file so I could not get them confused. Double checked that the one with the current files was named correctly. Went to migration assistant again and ran it again. Completed just fine but sill no file less than a year old. NOw I am really puzzled so I tried a test of one simple file to see if I was wrong in my assumptions. The address book file was one of the files that was a year old. I went to the time caplsule and drilled down to the exact file that address book makes. I had already thrown the corresponding file away on the new machine so I copied the file from the exact same location on the time capslue back up to the same location on the new machine. I then fired up address book on the new machine and the address book worked perfectly with the new and updated and current records.
So now I am sure that the drive image that I have been playing with on the time capsule has the up to date backups. But migtration assistant will not move them to the new machine. It will take a very long time to move every pages and numbers files scattered around in various folders to do this manually. What is wrong with migration assistant that it will not work correctly.

I am not asking if there is anything on the card. I'm not worried about the backup or recovering all of my information. I'm asking if setting up the replacement phone as NEW will change anything at all when I use the OLD sim card.

Migration Assistant Won't Migrate User Account from Time Machine

I am trying to move my wife's user account from a Time Machine backup using Migration Assistant. Migration assistant chugs along for 2 1/2 hours and says everything was transfered hunkie-dorie. However, when I try to log her on, I can't. When I log on as me, I went to System Prefs --> Accounts, her username is there. However, when I look inside the Users folder, none of her information is there.
thanks in advance,
tim

No Filevault on my computer and hers.
Doesn't work in Save Boot, either. That is the puzzle. Her account appears at the login screen--even the flower pic. that was migrated from from the Time Machine backup. The login screen will not accept any password. I know I'm typing it correctly. Her account appears in System Prefs --> Users, but it's not in the Users folder on my disk drive.
tim

Mavericks Migration Assistant Can't Find Destination

I have a 2010 Mac Pro from which I wish to import data to my brand new cylinder Mac Pro.   I've done this before, easy enough.
Unfortunately, after resetting the SMC, reboots, checking cabling, etc., /and/ speaking upwards through senior Apple Support, I still cannot get this to work.
Each system can see the other in the Finder. Firewalls are not enabled.
What happens is the destination Mac Pro can see the source just fine; however, the source cannot see the destination.   I can otherwise see the IPs 169.x and I can ping from/to each host.   I double checked "pfctl -d" and it is indeed disabled. I run Sophos on the older host, but I've never had an issue with it. I have VMware Fusion, but that shouldn't apply.
[ it's worth noting here, I have two new Mac Pros which would not display on the new thunderbolt displays, which was probably due to firmware -- OS updates seem to have resolved it ]
Wifi is also off on both.
I have the exact same results regardless of whether I'm on the local ethernet LAN or just a plain old point-to-point LAN (with different IPs) and I'm puzzled as to what could be wrong. Apple senior advisors were stumped as well -- they suggested I try this over firewire, but I'll need to get a firewire-to-thunderbolt adapter first.
So I am wondering if anyone out there has run into and solved this pernicious problem.   I've been working on this all day :-) I'll be damned if I have to install all these apps manually again, but I will if I have to.
Thanks.

franz1 wrote:
The top one has icons showing the two partitions from the external drive and the Air's HD.
That sounds like the Today (Now) display, the one that's show in full when you first Enter Time Machine. It's not a backup; it's the current contents of your Mac.
When I clicked on the 2nd window, it seems to be a back up from July 20, which I remember making on the old MacBook. It has one folder on it with my username.
Yes, that's a backup.
When I click on this folder, I find 4 folders inside it titled: Applications, Users, Library and System. I clicked on Applications and it was empty
That sounds like you'd excluded Applications from backups.   Or else you didn't wait long enough for all the apps to be displayed.
sometimes the names of programs covered with a see-through "no parking" sign - a circle with a slash through it
That's an incompatible app.
Is this the Time Machine's records?
Yup.
Can I click on the July 20 date and click on restore? Will everything just come back on it's own?
No. You can restore individual items that way (if you have permission to them), but not a whole system. You can restore "simple" apps that way, too, but not "complex" ones -- ones that came with their own installers, because they install other files in other places. If you don't restore those other things too, the app won't work well, if at all.
Can you post a screenshot of the Migration Assistant window that should show your backups (something like this):

After a Lion clean install, how do I retrieve my data from external back-up? Following Apple advice for use of Migration Assistant did not work creating similar issues leading to clean install.

After a Lion clean install, how do I retrieve my data from external hard drive?
Following Apple advice I used Migration Assistant which crashed new system twice which is why I had to clean install Lion in the first place.
Is there a sure way of doing it?
I have only a few programs that I will have to install myself and that should not be a problem.
I just want my data, music and photos back where I can use them.

Time machine backups. I went to migration assistant a few hours ago and limited my selection to "users", no need for applications, settings and other files. Stuff started moving over at a fast pace but has now seemed to stall.
I will let it run overnight as there are lots of songs and photos as well as a few movies.
If that does not work, then I will go into TM and try restore. I have restored some things in the past such a mail files and it has worked well.
The Apple fellow at the store told me to go right into TM, he may have had a point. I'll get it eventually.

I transferred data from my external hard drive to my restored Mac Book Pro via migration assistant and now my external hard drive in time capsule has red minus signs. How do I get rid of that without getting rid of any of my data?

I used Migration Assistant to transfer my data from my external hard drive via Time Capsule to my restored Mac Book Pro. When I now go into Time Capsule I there are red minus signs in the corner of all the folders that are contained in my back up. How do I get rid of this and access my previous back-ups?

Select the drive and Finder > Get info and at the bottom "ignore permissions on this volume"
You can copy the files, but the ownership on the files still belongs to the other user account, once your done copying, then perform a #6 Reset Users Permissions and that will set all the ownership to that account.
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
Another method is to copy the entire folder, then change it's permissions.

Migration assistant stopped working and has left me with 100gb in 'other'? How do I delete 'other' and what is it exactly?

I recently invested $2000 (one week ago) in a Macbook Pro Retina 2014 2.8ghz 512gb. Dont get me wrong, I am in love with my product and am extremely satisfied but I have honestly encountered nothing but issues.
My first issue was the transferring of data from my 2010 white macbook 500gb. Both laptops have Yosemite installed and are 100% up to date but I have spent the last week getting them to talk to each other. I am not new to the workings of Apple but I have never endeavoured to use applications such as airdrop, migration assisstant or even bluetooth.
My first attempt was to transfer 200gb of files (Photos mainly, I'm a photographer) to my other laptop via a 64gb USB in segments. But after an hour and only 10gb getting copied across, I decided other alternatives may be of more help.
That is when I came to my first dilemma: AIRDROP. Airdrop is crazy. Yes I did click the option on my retina to search for older macs and yes they did connect. I can send files from my MBR to my white macbook 2010 immediately but my old macbook will not send files to my retina. Yes all of the necessary sharing settings are in place - both MacBooks have the same settings selected so I cannot figure out what to do. Information on this subject would also be helpful yet it is not the end of my troubles.
Second Issue: Migration Assistant.
So yesterday I discovered this little 'gem'. I am a very impatient person so you can imagine i did not appreciate 20 hours of file transfers (via wifi as i do not have a thunderbolt to ethernet adaptor for MBR). Anyway that's all well and good if it actually worked. But of course it did not. I followed apples instructions and I was down to my final 4 hours this morning when my MBR told me the connection was lost and to reconnect. It was making the loudest whirring noise like air coming from inside the hard drive or something. I freaked out. My $2000 machine should not be doing this. It was only a little bit warm; not hot but it was incredibly loud, I'm not sure how to describe it. Keep in mind this computer is brand new so please tell me: WHAT WAS THE SOUND?!?!?!?! AND WHY? what was wrong? what could I have possibly done wrong? My wifi WAS working because my desktop PC was connected. So i waited and waited. Of course I couldn't actually do anything without quitting airdrop and in the end that's just what I had to do. A lot of time wasted for such an unsuccessful cause.
That brings me to my final issue:
So after migration had.... "completed" or crashed or whatever you want to call it, I at least assumed some of the files had maybe copied over and i could just resume from where I left off last time somehow. Oh how stupid that assumption was. My user account did in fact copy over but not a single file copied. And yes, I did log into that user account to check. ANYWAY, I went onto "about this mac" to see my storage info (still being optimistic about my wasted 20 hours). SURPRISE SURPRISE: Yet another problem. I now have 100gb in "other". This macbook is brand new. I should not have any GB in other. I am so incredibly annoyed. HOW DO I DELETE OTHER?! (preferably without downloading software) and is there anything else of importance in other that i should be careful not to delete that is contained within other?
I am only 15 years old and this was a massive investment for me so I treat my Macbook like a baby. And no, I'm not spoilt by my parents. I had to work at Subway for a year to earn $2000 - without spending a single cent (My wage is only $9.00AUD an hour so i essentially worked some 222 hours for this macbook). And I'm not crazy, I needed it for school.
Anyway I'm not impressed with apple. I have Applecare but they aren't open on the weekends or whenever I try to call so that hasn't exactly been helpful. PLEASE HELP ME.

Make a note of all your settings for Wi-Fi in the Network preference pane, then delete the connection from the connection list.
Launch the Keychain Access application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Keychain Access in the page that opens.
In the keychain list, an item named "System" should be listed. If it isn't, select File ▹ Add Keychain from the menu bar and add the following:
/Library/Keychains/System.keychain
Now search in Keychain Access for the name of the wireless network (not the name of the router.) Double-click one of the items and check the box labeled Show password in the inspector window. You'll be prompted for your keychain password to confirm. Make a note of the network password. Then delete every "AirPort Network Password" in the search results. Quit Keychain Access.
Go back to the Network preference pane and recreate the Wi-Fi connection with the same settings as before. You do this by clicking the plus-sign icon below the connection list, and selecting Wi-Fi as the interface in the sheet that opens. Select Join other network from the Network Name menu, then select your network. Enter the password when prompted and save it in the keychain.

HT4796 Migration assistant is telling me that it has lost connection with my Mac and to ensure they are on the same network. They are, and an ethernet cable is plugged into them. What do i do?

Migration Assistant has been running since yesterday evening. My Dell is now telling me that its trying to reconnect to my Mac and to ensure they are both using the same network. I have an Ethernet cable plugged in them and they are both on the same WiFi. What can I do?

Hello Wyodor,
thanks for your reply on my question.
You are wright the index file is 308 KB.
And offcourse that I delete my files and documents is not an Iweb problem, but because my English is not that good, that I thougt I try to tell the whole story, and hope people can read trough the lines.
Why I didn't use Iweb to upload to the server is because the server company recommanded to use file zilla. And I am a nobody with this kind of things, so I did exactly what they tell me to do.
No, i did not make a backup of Iweb and the domain file, but reading other messages on this forum showed me that I can maybe try to make empty the cashfile (?)
and otherwise I have bad luck and have to make my website again. Offcourse I have a lot of examples from all the pages (copied from the local map to my USB stick) and my website is aprox. 15 Mb, (not so big) so it will cost me a few nigths.
But I'm still hoping on a miracle :-)
greetings Lasource

Migration assistant freezes - PLEASE HELP ASAP

I am trying to run the migration assistant on a new imac i7 that I received. The "old" machine is an i5 ,and it is transferring about 500gb of data. It ran for many hours, and has been stuck on "19 minutes" remaining for about an hour now. What should I do?
Am I going to have to redo the entire transfer? (I hope not - it took HOURS, AND HOURS!)
I'm sure it isn't "good" to simply power off, or unplug one of the machines while the migration assistant is running. What should I do? Need to some asap, as I need to get the machine up and running.
Thanks for your help!
-Rick
twitter.com/Rick_Smith

Thanks for the feedback. I actually just followed the directions on the new i7.
I took it out of the box, powered on, went through a few menus, and then selected the option to transfer settings from another mac. It never asked for updates, or anything.
It simply asked me to hook up a firewire cable (fw 800), and then restart the "old" computer and hold down "t" as it restarted. It did that, the new machine "found" the "old" one, and it started transferring.
I had about 500 gb of data on the old machine. So it's taken a long time, but then it got to 19 min remaining, and has been stuck there every since. I really hate doing a hard restart, but it looks like I have no choice...
I guess I"ll go try that..
**fingers crossed*

Using A FireWire cable between two Macs and Migration Assistance to transfer all my desktop to my macbook laptop, will all my apps, bookmarks, contacts and files be transferred? I am trying to make a complete copy of my desktop to my laptop.

Using a FireWire cable between two Macs and the Migration Assistance feature, will al my apps, bookmarks, contacts and files be tranferred?

See Pondini's Setup New Mac guide

Computer not responding during migration assist

I bought a 27" iMac and have been trying to use migration assist to transfer my files and settings over from my 17" MacBook Pro with little success. The iMac recognizes the MacBook and the confirmation code pops up on both but once the migration begins, the iMac has a message pop up that says the MacBook is not responding, even though it has a message saying that the iMac is ready.
I've tried searching other posts here but can't seem to find any with the same issue. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Well, I was following the instructions as they were presented on the screen. As I mentioned, things seemed to progress normally, the two computers seemed to be communicating but then the message that the MBP was not responding would pop up and I would be forced to quit the migration.
I had tried both FW 800 and ethernet connections to no avail. After updating the iMac, I am running Mountain Lion on both machines and had consulted Pondini's guide prior to posting here. I also opened up all the sharing options I could find on both computers thinking that would help. I'll take a closer look at Pondini's guide and see if that provides some answers.
Thanks.

I have just taken delivery of a brand new 15" macbook pro, tried migration assistant from a time machine backup, music, photos, programs etc. They now take up 350gb of my hard drive but the files are nowhere to be found? can anyone help?

Set migration assistant to run whilst on a lunch break, given that it needed 2 hours or so, when i returned all programs and applications had moved across from my time machine backup of a now dead 15"macbook pro 2009 edition running snow leopard...When i look at my new system information it shows my new 500gb drive is full of music, movies and photos and has only 168gb free, not enough to run a new migration and i don't have any boot disks for Lion so really don't want to erase the hard drive. To compound the problem i'm in Vietnam where there isn't a genius bar just around the corner, or even an aasp within 700km - what should I do?

Is the HDD in the 2009 15" MBP dead? (The original source of your data) If not, you might want ot take it out and put it in an enclosure.
You might try spotlight on know files to see if that gives you any clues where your data is located.
You might down load from the Internet OmniDiskSweeper (free) and open it. It should show you all of the files you have on your MBP and enable to locate them.
Ciao.

When I use migration assistant it won't let me use my account name that I'm signed in with. It requires me to select a different user name and then creates a separate account where my files live. Why can't I select the user name and account name I have?

I'm trying to migrate my music and pictures over to my new iMac. When I use the migration assistant it connects to my PC fine but it won't let me use the account name and username that I have created as the admin. It requires me to create a new user account - so then I have two separate accounts to log in to which i don't want. How do I get it to let me use the current account that I have to move my files to?
Thanks!

Migration Assistant creates a new account and migrates all the information you have requested to that new account. There is no way around that. However once migrated you can move the data to the account you want to. Here are some instructions for doing so:
Transferring files from one User Account to another.

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!

I recently bought a new macbook pro and set it up using the migration assistant and my mac mini. I can't get the text message forwarding feature to work with both computers.

I recently bought a new macbook pro and set it up using the migration assistant from my mac mini. I can't get the text message forwarding feature to work with both computers. It keeps saying that I only have 2 devices setup, my iPad and my macbook pro. When I mess with the setting on my mac mini, it goes from saying that that is one of the devices to my macbook pro being the 2nd device. I think that something happened as a result of my using the migration assistant and now it thinks that my macbook pro and my mac mini are one and the same computer. Any ideas?

Thanks, Sig.
The old computer is a 2.6 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
The new one is a 2.3 GHz intel core i7
In going over this, thanks to "tallking it out" with you, I did discover the Text Edit problem. Because I've still been unable to get the new computer text size (fonts or whatever) to match the old computer, I did not notice that the curser is now different--the line midway down the curser has to be placed on the line I am working upon, otherwise the edits go elsewhere on the page. Now, with a bit of difficulty, I am able to get Text Edit to work correctly.
If you have any ideas as to why my menu bar and Text Edit type are still so slow, I'd love to have them.
(I went through the process you suggested earlier, re my Trackpad preferences, and found no improvement.)

Migration Assistant puzzle

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for