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ChipGore

Q: Is there anyway to get ANY feedback on the progress of the Migration Assistant (besides the occasional modifying of the "Estimated Time To Completion")?

Hi -

 

I'm trying to use the Migration Assistant between a MacBook Pro OS X 10.9 to a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display OS X 10.9 and it appears to be failing/hanging.

 

The source (old system) has 3/4 Tb drive that is mostly full and over 1,000,000 files on it, including 4 Virtual Machine files that are over 60 Gb each.

 

When running the Migration Assistant, with a dedicated eithernet cable between them, things seem to be moving fine till approximatly 45%-50% through the process, with the estimated time to completion changing (moving longer and shorter as the process is trying to guess the amount and number of files remaining and their relative average size).  But then, at a some point in what it thinks is about the middle of the transfer, the estimated time to completion stop changing, and that's where the process seems to hang forever.

 

Since I don't have any "disk activity lights", and there is no indication of what is happening (or what is trying to be happening), after "letting the system continue" for 2-3 times the displayed "time remaining", I've been abandoning the process with a "hard power down" (since there is no "abort" on either Migration Assistant UI) and it appears that NO files have actually been transfered (at least as far as I can see).

 

I have tried selecting less than everything to be migrated, ending up with the same behavior, just a different "time remaining estimate value" being the final display.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9), Mac to Mac migration failing

Posted on Nov 16, 2013 6:42 AM

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  • by L.Shaner,

    L.Shaner L.Shaner Feb 16, 2014 11:01 AM in response to ChipGore
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Feb 16, 2014 11:01 AM in response to ChipGore

    In answer to your opening question, there doesn't appear to be any way to get further details on Migration Assistant progress.

     

    Beyond that I have the same situation as you with some very large Virtual Machines.

    In the early part of the migration I was getting estimates of 30+ hours for the 2.6 TB that needed to be transferred but that number went up and down dramatically over time.

    At one point it rose to 88 hours and stayed solid on that number for over an hour, but then did proceed.

     

    A colleague of mine said he has had the same experience and it appears that the algorithm used to estimate time is just very poorly done.  It appears to look at the overall amount of data and the number of files and then compute an estimate based on how long the various files are actually taking to copy.  When it reaches a very large file that skews the computation grotesquely.


    The net net is just wait it out and those files will eventually copy.

     

    On the other hand, the reason I came to the support forums is because although after only 20 hours it appears MOST of my files have copied I have now been sitting for 10 hours on a screen that shows only a tiny tick left on the progress and the message saying "About 3 minutes remaining."   After 10 hours, I do not think it is going to make any further progress.  So yeah, I share your original question on how do I get more information on what it is ACTUALLY doing (and how do I get it to unstick)?

  • by Bryantaylor,

    Bryantaylor Bryantaylor Apr 8, 2014 8:06 AM in response to ChipGore
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 8, 2014 8:06 AM in response to ChipGore

    Same exact issue here... connect through an eithernet cable... gets 3/4 the way through copying then hangs showing 3-45 minutes left. after 24 hours i'm forced the canecel that proccess with a hard reboot.