wendythedesigner wrote:
I am so frustrated. I have a brand new MacBook Pro M3. Spent ALOT of $$$ on it and excited to use it. But I have had it 3 days and still cannot. I need to get the Data off my 2014 iMac onto this new laptop. It is virtually impossible at this point. Migration doesnt work on WiFi as I am a large format graphic designer and my files are MASSIVE.
Others in this forum recommend against migrating over Wi-Fi. I think you've discovered one of the reasons why – the hard way.
The iMac only has Thunderbolt 2 ports and I cannot get Thunderbolt 2 to a USB-C cable (doesnt exist).
An Apple Thunderbolt 3-to-2 Adapter and a Thunderbolt 1/2 cable would let you make a Thunderbolt connection. But this would be expensive (at least $80), and I don't know if you'd use that specialized hardware ever again.
You could try connecting the Macs with a USB-C to USB-A cable like this Amazon Basics USB-C to USB-A 3.1 Gen 2 Adapter Charger Cable, Fast Charger, 10Gbps High-Speed, USB-IF Certified one. I'm not sure if this would work, though. Macs used to support Target Disk Mode over FireWire (R.I.P.) and USB. But it looks like now, Apple wants the connection to be a Thunderbolt one. I don't know if the same restriction may apply to Migration Assistant.
Went to the Apple Store 3x now. I left with them saying to do it manually using hard disks. This cannot be the answer. Right?
Actually, that's the best way of doing it. Bring a backup of your old machine up to date. It can be a Time Machine backup, or a bootable clone backup made with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! Transfer the external drive to the new machine (using a USB-C to USB adapter if needed), and point Migration Assistant at it.
If you've been making backups of your old machine, updating one of your backups to do the migration should not take very much time.
If you haven't been making backups, you need to start. Operating without backups is an invitation to catastrophe and to losing all of your data.
