Migration assistant taking forever at "less than a minute"

Using Migration Assistant to set up new Macbook Pro running 10.8 from external drive (via USB) using 10.8 Time Maching back up from my iMac. I did the exact same thing in January from old Macbook Pro to new iMac without any trouble. This time around the migration assistant has been in "Less than a minutate remaining" mode for about 3 hours. It has gone from "tranferring files and folders" to "transferring system settings" but both has remained in "Less than a minute remaining." Should I be persistant and stick it out? If so, for how long? Some support threads say stick it out while Apple support says "this is not normal" and the back up could be corrupt and may need to be migrated in safe mode. Any thoughts or ideas shared here appreciated. Thanks!

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.

Similar Messages

  • 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.
    Any suggestions on what to do if it doesn't change anytime soon?

    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.

  • Migration Assistant taking forever

    I am using the migration assistant to transfer data from my 24" iMac 2.8ghz, to my new 27" 2.8ghz i7 and it is taking forever. So far it has been 24 hours. And everytime I look at the screen there is a different time amount left.
    If I wanted to, how would I stop the migration assistant?

    HI Diane,
    Force Quit the Migration Assistant app.
    Here are ways to force an application to quit:
    Choose Apple menu > Force Quit, select the application in the list, and click Force Quit.
    Hold down the Command and Option keys and press Esc. Then select the application in the list and click Force Quit.
    Hold down the Option key and press the application’s icon in the Dock.
    Carolyn

  • Migration assistant taking forever, says it has 127 hours till completion???

    Setup my mac before I wanted to transfer from my old computer. Today I connected my PC to my Mac via wifi using migration assistant. The only issue I am having is it's taken about 6 hours already with only about 1cm of loading. I am transferring about 450GB. I just checked it and it says it will be completed in approximately 127 hours!!! Any help would be great, I'm not sure what to do. I do not want to wait 5 days, that seems a bit stupid. Thanks 

    Sure.
    Your router should have (at the least) three Ethernet ports and you can use a cable to directly connect to your router, rather than using WiFi. Your PC most certainly has an Ethernet port where you can plug the cable from the router.
    Depending on which MacBook Pro you have, it will either have an Ethernet port (non-Retina) or you can purchase a Thunderbolt>Ethernet adapter from Apple. Then you'd use a cable to plug into the router so that both machines would communicate much faster than over WiFi.
    Call back if I haven't explained too well,
    Clinton

  • Migration Assistant Taking Forever. Does that make sense?

    I'm trying to use Migration Assistant to migrate between two similar G5 iMacs running Tiger 10.4.11. I did a clean OSX install and all updates on one, and am trying to migrate the one user and files from the other iMac (it has a flaky graphics card, so I want to use the other, healthier one instead).
    After several false starts, Migration Assistant via Firewire seems to be running, but estimate for moving ~21GB of docs, apps and files is 21 hours and 15 minutes.
    Actually, it's been saying that for the past hour with no indication that it's working or making progress. Does that seem right?
    Should I wait 22 hours to find out if i've wasted a day, or can someone confirm that this seems right or wrong. I used the firewire cable yesterday to migrate another iMac to new intel-based iMac with no problems - it was lightening fast, and this seems like I'm watching a dead turtle race waiting for a breeze to blow in to simulate what passes for motion.

    That seems way too slow, like 20 times too long easily, but (a) the progress indicator isn't very accurate to start with, usually way too long stated than it actually takes, and (b) it may be having real trouble reading the HD of the other one.
    I'd let it go a couple more hours and see if the progress vastly improves.

  • 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.

  • HELP! LOCKED IN LIMBO W/MIGRATION ASSISTANT DATA TRANSFER:  "LESS THAN 1 MINUTE LEFT" FOR 10 HOURS

    This has happened before. I'm migrating from one Macbook Pro to another Mac (though it doesn't seem to matter if it's a MBP or other Apple powerbook) and it gets almost to the end of the bar with the blue water line a sliver away from finishing but it stays at "less than one minute remaining" as it finishes up migrating settings. Going on 10 hours now.
    Have read other discussions from 2009 to earlier this month w/this issue.Some say it's a Lion OS issue that's been acknowledged as a flaw. Others had the same issue w/Leopard & say to ignore the remaining minute & leave it alone until it finishes which could take a day or more. I'm moving almost 300 GB of data. I've done this before and had same issue and interrupted it. I manually migrated over applications, documents, etc, one by one and it still took overnight just to do some of the data, so this is  not an inordinate amount of time.
    If it's going to complete, I'll let it run. If it's not, I'd like to know so I don't waste more time trying... Thanks in advance for assistance w/this conundrum.

    I'm not a big fan of migration assistant, because this happens all the time.  I'd give it a few more hours, then say "I give up."
    Why didn't you use the Setup Assistant on the target mac using the firewire disk mode?  I don't have absolute evidence, but you rarely see issues with people who use the Setup Assistant with a newly installed OSX (or brand new Mac). 

  • Migration Assistant says "Less than a minute to go" but this goes on for hours and nothing gets transferred to my new iMac 27"

    Am trying to transfer all my data from my old MacBook Pro 10.6.8 , 2.8GHz, 4GB memory to my new iMac 27" 10.9.4, 3.2 GHz, 8GB and after 3 days I still can't get there.
    I am using Migration Assistant. Both computers are on wi fi. I have connected them together with an ethernet cable.
    I can get the process going but hours later the computers say "less than a minute remaining" . I have left them alone for more hours but nothing moves on. I them quit and of course I find that nothing has been transferred.
    I am not very skilled at all this so I hope someone can help me with an easy solution.
    Thank-you

    Hello again baltwo
    The above didn't work so I then tried what you suggested and erased the hard disc, reloaded the OSX software and then tried the Migration Assistant again. Same old problem only now it doesn't get beyond "new mac selecting what to import". When I press continue the screen just goes grey then back to the login page.
    However another problem I have is that the free 'bundled apps' ... Pages. Numbers, Keynote, Garageband, iMovie and iPhoto have disappeared! I've been to the App store and into my account but they are not there under 'Purchases".
    This is all turning into a nightmare so any help would be very welcome.
    Thank-you

  • 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

  • "Less than a minute remaining" for over a few hours with Migration Assistant

    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

  • Less than a minute remaining...... Forever?

    Recently purchased a new computer, and I decided I wanted to keep so old files from my Powerbook G4. I planned on using a portable hardrive, however for some reason or another, my new computer was able to recognize the drive when I plugged it in, and my old one was not. So I used the migration utility instead, and did it over the network, which shockingly has taken 10 hours for 10 GB of information. However now its been telling me that there is less than a minute remaining for over a half hour. So is it going to finish in the near future, or should I press the tiny red button.

    "Less than a minute remaining" message when I restored my Macbook Pro drive from an external backup using Time Machine took AT LEAST 30 to 45 minutes. I was doing a complete restore of about 250 GB's. Don't reboot yet! Let it run.... listen for drive activity (lights, etc.). It isn't frozen, just taking forever. Obviously, the message at this point in the restore is not accurate. The blue bar was even all the way to the end and just sat there. The backup finished successfully.

  • Time Machine Migration hanging on "Less than one minute remaining"

    I decided to take a risk with my iMac and do an erase and install with Leopard, the version of OS X it's been running for years now. The reinstall went fine migration assistent got me started transferring my information from my Time Machine external USB 2.0 hard drive. It said it was just over 200 GB of information. That proceeded fine until it reached the "Less than one minute remaining" mark. It's been sitting here for over 12 hours in the "transferring files to support applications" process. What should I do? Is it alright for me to manually turn off the computer and re-boot? There is no cancel button or anything. I do get the pleasant clunking sound when I hit enter.

    Welcome to Apple Support Communities
    If you have connected both computers with a cable, disconnect and connect that cable again, so migration should continue. If it doesn't work, restart your MacBook Pro and check that all the files have been transferred. If not, open Migration Assistant and transfer your files

  • "less than a minute" when migrating, transfer fails

    Migrating to a MBP running 10.7.2. from white iMac running updated Snow Leopard. Everthing is fine until it gets near the end to "less than a minute" then hangs up there and goes no further. I quit and get nothing.

    Your TimeMachine drive is not functioning.
    Use a Firewire cable and a Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 adapter if you need it and follow the steps to hook the two computers together like I outlined above. Try migration assistant that way.
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    Last two methods you need to format the external drive correctly
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201
    Likely won't be able to respond further here.

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