Migration Assistant - Select Your Disk keeps spinning not finding disk

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Level 1

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Migration Assistant - Select Your Disk keeps spinning not finding disk

Background: I upgraded Leopard to Snow Leopard using the normal insert disk and click upgrade way. I quickly found that instead of all the performance increases that it was claimed to have everything felt 'clunky' and I encountered a fair few bugs. So, I thought the majority might be remedied by a clean install. I backed the important stuff up using Time Machine in SL and now...

Current Problem: When installing SL it displayed a blank screen when I tried looking for a backup when asked if I wanted to move settings. I thought, no problem, probably just an installer bug I'll let it boot up and use Migration Assistant. However, MA simply spins round not able to find any drives when connected or not.

Is there an alternative to using MA or a way to fix this? A quick note, I do have a TM backup made on Leopard that I copied across to my Ubuntu netbook simply because everywhere else was running out of space. I now can't copy that back across to my external HD because it can't 'Create a symbolic link', but that's another problem for another post.

tl;dr: Migration Assistant won't find external disk, looking for alternative or solution.

Ta.

MacBook 3,1, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Sep 3, 2009 12:25 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Scott Radloff

Level 6

14,496 points

Sep 3, 2009 2:02 AM in response to Nitesshadow

Nitesshadow,

How in the world did you "copy" a Time Machine backup to a Linux box? Hmmm. I wouldn't trust that. You might not know what's really going on in Time Machine.

Nevertheless, I have options for you. Alternatives galore. Provided you are able to get whatever external hard drive is storing your latest Time Machine backup mounted, I can assist you in restoring the user data to a new installation of Snow Leopard....

Step #1) Install Snow Leopard. Use the "Setup Assistant" to create a initial admin account using the exact same username and short name as you had in the old installation. If this is the same as that stored on your Linux box, all the better (it might give us even more options).

Step #2) In Snow Leopard, turn Time Machine off. Connect the Time MAchine backup drive. Attempt to access it in the Finder. If you can navigate down through the sub-folders at least until you get to a HOME folder, good. Next, Control-click the Time Machine icon in the Dock and choose "Browse another Time Machine disk." Test your ability to use the Time Machine interface to navigate the backup. Do nothing more. Do Not attempt to restore any files at this time. Exit Time Machine, then eject the drive.

Step #3) Post back and let me know what success with the above steps, if any, you have had. In the event that you cannot navigate the backup using Time Machine, but you can in the Finder, let me know: The exact name of the backup drive, the exact name of the startup drive that it backs (backed) up, and the exact name of the date/time stamped folder that contains the latest backup within the backup set. I'll also need to know your current short name (which should be the same as that within the backup).

Scott

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Answer 2

Nitesshadow Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 3, 2009 3:09 AM in response to Nitesshadow

Hi there Scott, call me Tim =)

I simply copied across the Backups.backupdb folder assuming all Time Machine info would be in there. It was late at night and I didn't think to check for any hidden files TM might put there that I also needed! It might be worth mentioning that it isn't a full backup, just e-mails, appointments, documents, users etc.

SL is installing now, 9 minutes remaining and will let you know how it goes later.

Cheers,
Tim

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Answer 3

Nitesshadow Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 3, 2009 4:06 AM in response to Nitesshadow

Hi Scott,

Sorry about the long wait I made the mistake of not wiping the disk before installing and had to do it again!

I have followed your steps and can view my old backup in Time Machine, as well as Finder. I have not copied anything across and await your instruction.

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Answer 4

Nitesshadow Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 3, 2009 4:13 AM in response to Scott Radloff

Oh, and another thing, I have two accounts (admin and limited), should I make a copy of each in Snow Leopard?

Sorry for posting another reply but I just realised I was replying to myself.

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Answer 5

Nitesshadow Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 3, 2009 1:38 PM in response to Scott Radloff

Hey Scott,
Sorry to keep on but I'm really anxious to get my user accounts back online. What's the next step?

Best regards,
Tim

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Answer 6

Sep 3, 2009 1:54 PM in response to Nitesshadow

Tim,

OK, let's get to work...

Yes, you should have "receptacle" accounts already in place to accept the HOME folders (user data) you will bring in. In all cases, the username and short name should be exactly the same as the accounts that were present in the old installation. Be careful that you create the "limited" account with all the same limitations. These limitations exist outside of the user data that will be brought in. OK? Once the accounts are set up, continue...

1) Open System Preferences>Accounts. We're going to enable the "root" user. This is done using Directory Utility using the instructions that can be found here. However, Directory Utility no longer resides in the "Utilities" folder. It is now opened directly from the "Accounts" pane. I'll give the instructions, but it might be helpful if you just opened Mac Help and typed "root account" into the search field.

So, unlock the padlock, then click "Login Options." Near the bottom, click the "join..." button next to Network Account Server. At the bottom of the dialogue sheet, click "Open Directory Utility." Follow the instructions linked above to enable the root account (set a good password!).

2) Log out of your admin account, and into the "root" account. The Login window will display a new "other..." user. Click this, then enter "root" as the username and your root account password (set by you in step #1 above). This will appear like any other account to you.

3) First make a visit to System Preferences>Time Machine and insure that it is turned off (it should be). Then connect your Time Machine backup drive. Navigate into the "Users" folder on your internal hard drive, then drag the entire contents to the trash (yes, the trash!). Next, Control-click the Time Machine icon in the Dock and choose "Browse another Time Machine disk." Select the backup of your older installation, then navigate into the "Users" folder (if you are not already there). Go one step "back in time." You should see HOME folders that look identical to the ones you dragged to the trash earlier. Restore these to the "Users" folder on your internal hard drive. NOTE: these restored folders should have the exact same names as the ones in the trash.

4) Exit Time Machine, then eject the Time Machine drive. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal. At the prompt, carefully type the following text:

<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">chown -R username:staff /Users/username</pre>

In the above command, you will replace all instances of "username" with the short name for one of the migrated accounts. If the short name is "fred," for example, you will type the following exactly:

<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">chown -R fred:staff /Users/fred</pre>

Verify that what you typed is correct, then press <RETURN>. If all goes well, you will simply return to a prompt with no messages given. Repeat this process for the other (or any other) account(s).

5) Log out of the root account, then into one of the migrated accounts. Test that all seems to work as expected, and repeat for any other accounts. If all seems well, log back into the root account, empty the trash, then log out of and disable the root account.

6) Reinstall your third-party applications from the original media. Keep in mind that the data and settings for those applications will already be in place within your various HOME folders.

Scott

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Answer 7

Nitesshadow Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 4, 2009 7:43 AM in response to Scott Radloff

Scott,

I can't thank you enough, your solution has solved my problem and restored everything back to normal functionality, more than I thought it would. As well as this, you showed me an area of OS X that I did not realise even existed (root user, chown etc).

That's brilliant, thank you =)

Best wishes,
Tim

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Answer 8

Sep 4, 2009 12:13 PM in response to Nitesshadow

🙂

Scott

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Answer 9

Sep 4, 2009 12:22 PM in response to Scott Radloff

Unbelievable - Niteshadows situation is exactly like mine. And I am about to follow Scott's instructions.
Thank you Scott!

I am still puzzled about why Migration Assistant is having problems? Is it an issue with the external disk partition table? Hard to believe esp. since my TM backup was created by SL on external disks formatted by SL!!

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Answer 10

Sep 4, 2009 12:42 PM in response to akbhargava

akbhargava,

Let us know how it goes. -s

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Answer 11

Sep 5, 2009 1:19 AM in response to Scott Radloff

Scott
I have a slightly different problem in that I can't seem to navigate the TM backup in the Finder.

I'm not sure if this is part of the problem, but the TM backup was run over wifi to a firewire 400 external drive connected to a MacMini – so I can't just connect it back to my MacBook (the unibody one without any firewire ports).
I can still mount the backup volume across the network, but I only see the .sparsebundle file, no folders.
Can you clarify what I should see?

(I think I've set the new accounts up to match the old ones, but lost any record of the shortnames when I had to wipe the drive, so can't be absolutely certain)

Incidentally, the .sparsebundle is 137Gb, so I know there is lots of data there, and I ran TM before I started the (disastrous) Snow Leopard upgrade so it should be fully up to date… if only I could restore it!

Thanks for any help you can give.
Kenny

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Answer 12

Sep 5, 2009 5:59 AM in response to Kenny Mcnally

Scott
Solved it!

Just had to double click on the .sparsebundle to mount it and make it available to TM.
Think I tried that a while ago but it was probably on a machine that didn't have enough space to mount the image.

After that it worked wonderfully.

Thanks for all the help and advice you've given to this forum.
Kenny

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Answer 13

Sep 8, 2009 8:59 AM in response to Scott Radloff

Scott - your method worked like a charm. Thanks v much!

Any clues to why Migration Assistant was having issues?

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