Migration Assistant not working...help!

Question

Migration Assistant not working...help!

Trying to help a friend move from his old MacBook Air (13-inch, late 2010) running OS 10.13.5, to his new MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2020) running OS 10.15.3. Can't go to the Genius Bar so hope you can help! Migration assistant up on both units, which are on the same wi-fi network. New MacBook sees the old one (see attached pics) but when I click "Continue" I get "Unable to Connect" message. Firewall and File Vault are OFF on both units. Tried setting Target Disk Mode on old computer, but (a) in System Prefs>Startup Disk there is no "Target Disk Mode" button, and (b) if I restart old computer holding down "T" key, it does not work, all I get is a flashing folder-with-question-mark icon. Any suggestions on what's going on and if it's fixable?

MacBook Air

Posted on May 4, 2020 11:37 AM

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Answer 1

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rose_10

Community Specialist

May 5, 2020 8:40 AM in response to Dan Dan the Yearbook Man

Hello, Dan Dan the Yearbook Man.

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

I understand you're having troubles getting migration assistant to work so you can get the data transferred over to a new MacBook. I'd like to help.

From the screenshots, it appears that you're trying to migrate to the Time Capsule and not the other Mac. I see that it is also still searching for other sources, how long have you waited to see if the other MacBook appears? Are you using the steps shown in this article? How to move your content to a new Mac

Keep me updated.

Cheers!

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Answer 2

May 5, 2020 8:58 AM in response to rose_10

Hi, thanks for the response. I am trying to migrate from the old Mac, not the TC. At any rate I phoned Apple Support this morning, and the consensus was, OS Catalina doesn't play well with OS High Sierra when trying to migrate. We were able to do a workaround by doing a Time Machine backup on my external drive then having the new Mac migrate everything from that. So, problem figured, and solved. Thanks!

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Migration Assistant not working...help!

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