Data transfer
Transferring data to a new Mac from old Mac. Both say “transferring your information” for 11 hours. Is this normal?
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15
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It might be normal. The key factors are (A) how much data are you transferring, and (B) what connection are you using between the two devices.
Connecting two Macs directly sometimes comes at a price because you have two computers that have to interact. If one or both of them has a spinning (mechanical) drive, that will slow things down by a lot. Also, unless you have a high-speed cable connecting them, it can take a very long time. How much data are you transferring. What is the connection method?
Typically the fastest way is to use Migration Assistant with an external drive that is either a Time Machine or "clone" backup of the old Mac, with the highest speed cable connecting the external drive to the new Mac. Thunderbolt or at a minimum USB 3.
If the old Mac is quite a bit older in terms of MacOS, the migration can take a while because it's not just copying files, things have to be moved around and adjusted, for instance going from an older Mail to a new Mail program. And there are many files in the system and user Library folders to be rearranged.
I recently used Migration Assistant to transfer everything from a MacBook Air running 10.13 to a new MacBook Pro running 10.15. I used an external USB 3 backup drive for the transfer. I believe the total time required was around 3 to 5 hours. Total data transferred was about 125 GB, not much at all. But it still took a long time.