Migration Assistant Hangs in Leopard set up

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Level 1

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Migration Assistant Hangs in Leopard set up

My hard drive failed when I was trying to upgrade to Leopard. Apple installed a new hard drive with Leopard on it; I brought it home tonight, plugged in my firewire drive that contains my full back-up of my old HD, and when prompted by Leopard set-up, chose to move over all the files. About 45 minutes ago the thing stalled. The dialogue shows "less than a minute remaining" and "Transferring your network settings" but the barber pole bar hasn't moved and nothing has happened. It's obviously stuck.
What should I do???
Help is appreciated.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Aug 6, 2008 6:46 PM

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Answer 1

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Aug 6, 2008 7:40 PM in response to Herself_NYC

it certainly looks like MA is totally stalled. you should abort it and see what's actually installed. hard to say anything else at this point. since you have a full backup there is nothing to really worry about. in the worst case you can always reinstall and migrate your data again.

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Answer 2

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Aug 6, 2008 11:58 PM in response to Herself_NYC

If the *full backup* on the FWHD is bootable, then just boot with it and use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! and restore it to the new drive.

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Answer 3

Oct 21, 2008 1:06 AM in response to baltwo

Here's a tip: Complete your new system install without migrating, Be careful to create an admin user with a different user name and short name than any of the users you intend to migrate. On your source machine, run Disk Utility and repair permissions on the boot volume. Then set the source machine up in target disk mode (restart holding down the "T" key). Launch the Migration Assistant and set it up to migrate what you intend to migrate. Start the migration. Open boot volume in a window and make note of the "XX GB Available" display at the bottom of the window. As long as this number is declining, your migration is proceeding apace. IGNORE THE TIME REMAINING CALCULATION in Migration Assistant. This calculation easily gets confused and will often display "Less than a minute remaining". Depending on the complexity and size of the migration (number of apps, etc.) the migration may take a LONG LONG LONG time. It will always take longer than you think it should. Just watch the space remaining display on the boot disk. As long as it counts down, you're still working.

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