Migration Assistant threw me a curve

I'm an Apple newbie & Migration Assistant put all the files from my old PC into folders on the Mac HD that are now denied access permission to me. They didn't go into the folder I set up as mine when using Setup Assistant. For instance, all my images did not go into Iphoto as promised by Migration Assistant. Considering deleting all that and transferring files manually using HDs, but I thought I'd see what this forum had. Thanks.

Thanks all. Got the question answered. A matter of learning to work in a new operating system. But I have to say, Migration Assistant seems to do it's own thing. I'd recommend skipping it and just transferring the files manually via external HD. That way you know what is going where.

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Multiple problems with Migration Assistant

I have just wasted more than 4 hours trying to transfer all my information from my G5 iMac to my new 13-inch aluminium MacBook using an ethernet cable and the 'Migration Assistant'.
Perhaps someone here can enlighten me as to why this has been such an unmitigated disaster and where I went wrong.
I followed the instructions exactly as to how to proceed - this is what happened ...
The Migration Assistant showed that the items I selected to transfer were as follows -
Documents 5.9GB
Music 20.8GB
Pictures 34.1GB
All Other Files 5.5GB
Total 66.3GB
The transfer commenced at 1748. By 2053 the Migration Status in the dialog box stated -
'Transferring files to support applications' - the progress bar showed that this was more than 95% completed and the message below the progress bar stated 'Less than a minute remaining'. Both the 'Go Back' and 'Continue' buttons in the dialog box were greyed out.
After a further hour with no progress I terminated the Migration Assistant application. My MacBook showed that the transfer had been completed 'with some errors' - I cannot recall the exact error message but it referred to 'Charcoal' and fonts.
When I commenced the transfer I had only used 15.7GB of my MacBook hard drive. Apart from doing a custom reinstall of the OS I had also installed Office 2008:mac. After the transfer I ran Disk Utility which showed that I have now used 85.2GB of my MacBook hard drive.
HOWEVER, when I opened iPhoto - it is completely empty. Similarly, iTunes has no music in it either.
How can this be??? Of course, there are no documents in the Documents folder either.
Can someone please tell me whether I should simply do yet another Erase and Install (and waste another day of my time) or whether there is some way I can locate my missing data?
Needless to say, I never had these problems when I could connect one Mac to another using a Firewire cable and transfer my data via Firewire.
I'm sorry if I have made some very basic mistake here, however, I thought that if I followed the instructions as to how I could transfer information 'from another Mac' it would 'just work'. How wrong I was!
Tricia

Thank you for the suggestion Doug. A few extra hours of digging today resolved my problem.
I remembered that, when I initially started to transfer the data the Migration Assistant threw up a warning to the effect that the user name I was transferring from the iMac already existed on the Mac Book (am I the only one who uses the same long name and short name on two machines???). Naturally, the MacBook has to have the user's name set up before the Setup Assistant or the Migration Assistant can be used to transfer files and folders from another Mac. I recall that the only option that allowed me to proceed with the transfer was to change both the long and short names on the iMac (the machine from which I was transferring the information).
This prompted me to check Macintosh HD/Users.... I was surprised to see that, apart from the account I had set up on the MacBook there was a second user (with the new short name from my iMac). This User had folders for Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Library, Music and Pictures (all of which had the little red circle with the minus sign in the lower right hand corner of the folder).
So, I logged out as my normal user name and then logged in using the user name from the iMac and ...voila ... my iTunes music folder, my iPhoto library, my documents and all the applications on the iMac had been transferred to the MacBook under my iMac user name.
Because I don't want to have two user accounts on my MacBook I copied the iTunes music folder and the iPhoto library to the Shared folder - making sure that I first used Get Info to check the Sharing and Permissions for the folders which I changed to allow my 'normal' name Read & Write privileges. After they were copied into the Shared folder I logged out of my 'iMac name' and logged back in as my normal name. I then copied the iTunes music folder and iPhoto library from the Shared folder to my Home/Music and Home/Pictures folder.
I know it was a very 'clunky' way of getting what I wanted but it all works!! I'm now busily deleting the apps that were copied across from the iMac because, obviously, my iMac is a PPC G5 and my MacBook is an Intel. It occurred to me that I'm better off either re-installing from disk or downloading directly to my MacBook so that the apps are for Intel machines not the PPC.
Cheers
Tricia

Migration Assistant stalls: Solutions and tips

As a long-time Mac user and fairly competent OS X guru, I was not a happy camper when I found myself floundering through the process of migrating my 2007 MacBook Pro with OS X 10.7 to a brand-new MacBook Pro with OS X 10.8 this weekend. What was even more frustrating than serial freezes of the Migration Assistant was the lack of a clear roadmap to solving the problem. Fortunately I'm the persistent and methodical type, so I DID solve the problem and figured it was worth taking the time to write up some tips for future sufferers who might feel as though the only solution is to throw up their hands, take both machines to the Mac store, and fork over $99 to have them keep the machines for several days to do what ought to be easy.
1. Buy a Firewire cable that fits both of your Macs. 2007 and later MacBook Pros have the 9-pin socket as well as a 6-pin socket. The 9-pin to 9-pin cable works just fine. I think a 6-pin to 9-pin ought to work but haven't yet tested.
2. When you first start up your new machine, DO NOT go through the standard migration process. Just set up a temporary admin account as if it were a new machine that you were not going to migrate. Don't use your usual account name or the name of any account that's on your old machine -- just set up a temporary account that you can delete later if you don't need it. Oh, and a word to the wise: don't use a stupid password just because this is a temporary account! You might forget to delete that account and leave the whole machine vulnerable in case it got out of your hands.
3. Once you've got your new machine all booted up, do a Software Update. OS X 10.8 was installed on my system, but the current version is 10.8.2. What I didn't know (and no one at the Apple Store told me even after I had problems) was that 10.8.1 contained a fix for Migration Assistant freezes. Why I couldn't learn that by searching the Apple database I haven't the foggiest -- it's the kind of thing that ought to be front and center and well-known by all Apple Geniuses, don't you think? But now you DO know: update your machine before running Migration Assistant and you'll save yourself a lot of time and frustration. BTW, I could not do this through the Apple Store: 10.8.2 requires 10.8.1, so I had to search for the 10.8.1 update, install that one, and then download 10.8.2 and install that, restarting the system after each install. Sooner or later there will be a cumulative update, so if you're reading this sometime in the future it might not be so difficult. But it's always good policy to get the OS to the current level before trying anything fancy.
4. Once your software is all updated, turn off wi-fi on both machines. Migrating via wi-fi seems to be the default, and you could spend many, many hours waiting for that to happen. Turn off the wi-fi and plug in your Firewire to connect the machines. Theoretically this process also ought to work by plugging both machines into the same Ethernet router, but I haven't tested that yet either.
5. Start the Migration Assistant on your new machine. (Just type "Migration" into the Spotlight box and you'll find it). Tell it that you'd like to migrate "from a Time Machine backup or other hard drive" rather than from another computer. That's not strictly true, but that's what you have to choose to make the Firewire work. Then start the Migration Assistant on the old machine and wait for the new one to find the old one via Firewire. Duh, that one took me a while to figure out, and I only stumbled across it after the two machines connected via Firewire couldn't find each other and I threw up my hands and connected the old Time Machine backup to the new machine and restarted the process to try to migrate via TIme Machine backup. I hadn't disconnected the Firewire, and the two machines found each other on that connection within seconds. I'm sure Firewire was far faster than doing the same task via USB drive would have been!
6. Having already had the process stall on me several times, I was cautious about how much I wanted to migrate at a time. So I first did only "Applications," and then restarted the Migration Assistant to do "Settings," "Users," and finally the rest of my files. Each one took a while (several hours, with files being an overnight run - I have a LOT of stuff), but the results were just about perfect except for a couple of apps that didn't quite get all re-installed. I imagine that you could do it all in one go if you wanted to -- I'd just been burned too many times to want to try that :-)
7. One other tip: if your migration DOES hang, don't hestitate to CMD-Q and kill it on both machines. It doesn't hurt a thing although it may leave some partial (and non-functional) accounts hanging around. I haven't gone back to look for those yet, but eventually I will and I imagine they'll be pretty easy to clean up. And of course the corollary is that you can run the Migration Assistant as many times as you like, even importing apps and users from multiple machines if you like. Kind of useful if you're consolidating machines.
Hope this helps anyone who has similar problems now or in the future. After Thanksgiving I'm going to try migrating an old iMac running 10.6.8 to a new Mac Mini by connecting them both to the router since I don't have a 6-9 Firewire cable. I'll pop in to update this posting and we'll all have a bit more generic feedback on the best way to use that Migration Assistant. Sheesh, maybe the Apple Geniuses will all read this and be able to better advise their customers and keep those loyal folks who have used Macs for many years and are willing to do their own migrating from running into the same brick walls that I managed to find.

It may have completed the migration. Have you logged out and then looked for a new user account to see if your migration was completed?

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 with Thunderbolt to Firewire Adapter?

Hey gang-
Finally retiring my mid-2007 iMac with a new Late-2013 iMac. Yayyyy!
I've always been happy with Migration Assistant, but wanted to ask the experts if Migration Assistant will work with the Apple Thunderbolt to Firewire Adapter. I'm planning on connecting the old iMac Firewire 800 port to the new iMac Thunderbolt port via the adapter. On a related note, I assume that same as always, I will need to boot the old iMac into Target Disk mode, right?
Thanks!
Dave

Of course. You can connect both iMacs with a FireWire 800 cable and a Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter without any problem. The problem would come if the old iMac has not got FireWire 800 ports, but the Mid 2007 iMac comes with one.
In order to use Migration Assistant and transfer files from another iMac through FireWire, you need to put your old iMac in Target Disk mode as you said. To do this, simply hold the T key while your old iMac is starting up until you see the FireWire icon in the display. Then you can set up your new iMac, and you will be asked to transfer your data.
If you have already set up your new iMac, use Migration Assistant (in /Applications/Utilities) > http://pondini.org/OSX/MigrateLion.html

Migration Assistant threw me a curve

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