Migration Assistant Madness

Brntoki wrote:

I'm sorry, but am guilty of being terribly wordy and so try to keep things simple and short, but often at the expense of clarity. </wordy-on> lol

@ Luis

I didn't mention the cable type, but thought it would be understood that it was at least a USB-C to USB-C, since both computers have those ports natively. Could have been thunderbolt too, of course. It was USB-C/USB-C.

I mentioned (not as straight as I could have) that the two MBPs were directly connected to each other via a cable, which pretty much rules out an ethernet cable. I also mentioned the size of transfer was, I thought, around 700GB. It was actually closer to 500 though.

When the Migration Assistant on the new MBP was searching for a Mac to migrate from, even though they were next to each other, the old MBP was on and already running Migration Assistant and was set to transfer to a Mac, it (the new MBP) couldn't find the old one. It asked me to attach a cable, so I did (USB-C/USB-C). I didn't think anything of this until much later when I noticed that the transfer was being done via a direct (as I mentioned) WiFi connection (i.e. MBP to MBP; no wired lan or wireless router involved). I've heard of target disk mode, but don't know how to enable/initialize it, and assume you probably can't from the initial setup process (i.e., no user account created yet).

@Blueberry

Yes. Exactly what it did, peer to peer WiFi, to my dismay.

I know how to turn off WiFi, but that can, AFAIK, only be done from within a logged-in user account. This is one thing I should have been clear and explicit about. This was the very initial setup sequence of this brand new MBP and it had no user accounts on it at all. I wanted to use Migration Assistant because, if I created an account and then did the migration, I would have had to delete the account I just set up as it would be unneeded. Knowing what I know now, this would have been a much better option.

To be clear, the setup and process was very easy and straightforward, but the implementation of the actual copying of data, especially since I was asked by Migration Assistant to connect a cable directly to the Mac I would migrate from, was, unnecessarily, very, very slow, though I appreciate the convenience of having everything, including all my settings, bang on and ready to go.

Let me try to explain in a little more detail, as my previous post was quite terse and may have come out as somewhat rude (which was not my intention).

In order to do the migration, you have to have one of the following situations:

1) Have a Time Machine backup, or a clone of the old mac drive in an external, and attach it to the new mac (*)

2) Have both macs connected to the same wired or wireless network (**)

3) Start the old mac in Target Disk Mode, and connect it to the new one with a Thunderbolt cable (it has to be Thunderbolt, not just a common USB-C cable (***))

(*) This is my preferred option, because I would have done the backup, anyway; it is (relatively) fast and does not rely on wireless connections

(**) This is what you did. It's is a viable option. It requires that both macs be connected to (in this case) wifi.

I would have liked to see the exact wording about "connecting a cable" that you saw. I have to say that you must have misinterpreted that as "connect a USB-C cable", and that the cable was not used for migrating, contrary to what you assumed.

(***) This could potentially be the fastest way, but would require a Thunderbolt 3 cable and, depending on the age of the older mac, an adapter. It could be really fast because the internal drives on macs are much faster than an external drive, particularly if it is an HD and not an SSD (and for backups, HD are still much cheaper and do fine).

It does not help matters much that the plugs for USB-C and Thunderbolt are the same, but the cables certainly aren't.

For example, the cable that comes with my mac power adapter, even though it may look very similar to a real Thunderbolt 3 cable, can only transfer data at old USB 2 speeds...

You could try disabling the WiFi on both machines. Another approach could be to make a Time Machine backup of the "old" machine to an external disk and then moving that disk to the "new" machine and running the Migration Assistant only on the "new" machine.

- Pie Lover

As Luis has mentioned, I don't think that you can use a USB cable. A regular ethernet cable should work. If it doesn't, I would try a separate cable from each machine plugged in to an ethernet hub.

As for disabling the WiFi connection, disabling it on the "old" machine should have been sufficient. It's possible to disable WiFi on the "new" machine (networksetup -setairportpower en1 off (on to enable) from Terminal run from a bootable installer) but I don't think that would have been necessary.

To my mind, given what I understand, I think it the easiest approach would have been to connect the Time Machine disk directly to the new machine. That said, there have been many recent posts about an apparent incompatibility of some devices with Monterey.

I like the flexibility that the Migration Assistant offers. For example, there may be times when only the user files need to be transferred.

- Pie Lover

P.S. It's not a bad idea to have a second admin account on the new machine. I tend to use the default admin account only in rare cases.

I now understand much better what is happening (did happen), but still scratching my head as to why. I.E., why would Apple limit Migration Assistant to external disks (ones that would presumably connect with USB-C no less), a network connection, or thunderbolt?

I think that the answer is that USB is not really a network technology (and it is not a peer-to-peer technology, there is always a "master" device). You can't mount the other mac's drive via USB, or share your internet connection via USB; but you can create a peer-to-peer network over Thunderbolt, if you know how - that is what the "Network Bridge" service is there for in System Preferences->Network - or over Ethernet.

You never had the option of putting your mac in Target Disk Mode using USB (of any generation), but you did have that with Firewire, and have now with Thunderbolt.

Basically, there are things that USB is not really meant for. It is fine for connecting a hard drive, a situation where your computer is the "master" and the drive is the "slave", but with two computers, you'd have two "masters"; maybe it could be made to work, but is just not worth the effort, given that you can do that over the same ports but with different technology (Thunderbolt).

For info on how to directly connect two Macs for File Transfer see:

Transfer files between two Mac computers using target disk mode - Apple Support

Transfer files between a Mac with Apple silicon and another Mac - Apple Support

Transfer files between two Mac computers using target disk mode - Apple Support

Use Ethernet to connect two Mac computers - Apple Support

https://www.insidemylaptop.com/connecting-two-macs-to-migrate-data-from-one-to-another/

I believe that the Migration Assistant uses a peer-to-peer WiFi connection between the two machines which avoids having to connect to your WiFi local area network.

- Pie Lover

You are not giving any information as to what "cable" this is, or particulars of how you initiated this.

Migration can take a longer or shorter time depending on many factors, among them the size of the content to transfer and, of course, the medium used.

It would be useful to know exactly what message you got about a cable, and which cable you are talking about.

The fastest possible way would probably be using target disk mode and connecting the two macs directly via thunderbolt.

I am thinking that you had each of your macs connected to a router via Ethernet. Is that it? Or something else?

Please explain.

Just two observations, both about this phrase:

"Make sure that the other Mac, Time Capsule, or disk that you are transferring from is connected

to the same network or directly connected to this Mac."

The first is that it does say "or"...

The second is that I agree that it does not clarify what it means to be directly connected - probably because when it was written, the "directly connected" part was meant to refer to a disk drive that you would connect to your mac.

I agree that it could be made clearer.

Here's how you turn off WiFi completely ...

Let me be abundantly clear: you can't migrate using a USB-C to USB-C cable.