MBA: Migration Assistant Warning! Time Machine Warning!
I am the proud owner of a new 11" MBA and so far I love the machine. BUT there was a bit of trouble in paradise. I'm posting this cautionary tale to help/warn others so they can avoid certain pitfalls. The two problems I had (with Migration Assistant and Time Machine respectively) might be problems some of you already know about, ditto on the solutions, but I figure that there may be someone like me running into these and as mystified as I about how to deal with them. Here's hoping this post helps them out.
I had a 2008, 13" MBP and my aim was to transfer everything off it to the MBA. Meaning I wanted to make my MBA into a mini-me version of my Pro. Being able to do this was very important to me, and it would be a deal-breaker if I couldn't do it. As I was only transferring 40gb of data, it seemed do-able. But I still asked about and got assurance from the store that Migration Assistant paired with Ethernet should do the job.
To be on the safe side, I did a Time Machine back up onto an external hard drive (we will get back to this!).
Here is the first warning: Migration Assistant, even using Ethernet rather than wireless, might not work. It did not work between my two computers. Both during the set-up process (where the computer asks if you want to transfer data from another computer) and after (I tried using Migration Assistant after set-up in case the "set-up" was the issue), the connection between computers failed.
Migration Assistant would get as far as "gathering info" and then the Air would announce "network failure" and the Pro would announce that the Air had stopped talking to it. A call to Apple and an hour on the phone with a fellow who had me try just about everything finally got me to a superior who essentially said, "The Air can't get past something on your Pro." Meaning whatever was interfering with the process could not be easily or quickly found and extracted. There was no solution to this problem. Migration Assistant would not let me copy my Pro onto my MBA, not wirelessly, nor with an Ethernet cable.
*First Warning:* if you want to copy your old machine onto you new MBA, and all you've got is an ethernet cord and Migration Assistant, you might be out of luck.
*Second Warning:* Use Time Machine to make a back-up of your computer and *know where that back-up is!*
As I said, I took precautions and put a copy of my Pro on an external hard drive. I highly recommend doing this as Time Machine really is remarkable and invaluable. Note that the first time setting up Time Machine takes hours, even for a smallish amount of gig. Make sure to turn off the "sleep" option on your computer and leave it to do the Time Machine thing while you either work on it for however many hours or go out with friends to a couple of movies. Once that initial set-up is done, Time Machine updates very quickly and invisibly.
So, the next step of the story was to hook up this hard drive to my MBA via USB. No problem. I ran Migration Assistant telling it, this time, to go with Time Machine back up. All should have been well...except the MBA *could not see* my back up! Migration Assistant asks "What disk?"--meaning which "backed-up disk" would I like to copy. At this stage it presents choices in a window.
But no choices came up in my window! The hard drive's icon could be seen on the MBA's desktop. And when I ran Time Machine on my Pro, it worked fine, showing me the back up. Preferences affirmed that the back-up had been made to that hard drive. Why couldn't the Migration Assistant find the back-up? Speaking of which...could I find the back-up? Opening up the Hard Drive and taking a look at what was on it, I found that, no, I couldn't really find that back-up. Actually, it was there and visible. It just didn't look like a back-up folder. It had the picture of a disk on it. It had to be clicked on to reveal what it was. So, there it was. What was the problem?
I'd gotten an expert to help me by now and once they got my back-up looking like a folder, a little red dot (minus sign?) told us the problem: it was off-limits. What? Choosing the folder and "getting info" we found that only my Pro "user" could "read/write" on it. Clicking on the "+" sign, we added the MBA "user" and gave them read/write privileges.
Now, at last, Migration Assistant could find the back-up and run it. And I got a perfect, "mini-me" copy of my Pro on my MBA. (Don't you love happy endings?) So, if you're trying to do something similar on your MBA, be aware of these two warnings. First, Migration Assistant may fail you if you're just trying to connect the two computers either wirelessly or via ethernet. Time-Machine is a much more reliable method (and pretty fast! My 40gb took about 30 minutes). Second, find your back-up and make sure the new MBA can read/write on it before doing the transfer. It should work and work well if you do that!
Hope this helps and supports others. Please, anyone with similar problems/solutions, feel free to use this thread to discuss them.
I had a 2008, 13" MBP and my aim was to transfer everything off it to the MBA. Meaning I wanted to make my MBA into a mini-me version of my Pro. Being able to do this was very important to me, and it would be a deal-breaker if I couldn't do it. As I was only transferring 40gb of data, it seemed do-able. But I still asked about and got assurance from the store that Migration Assistant paired with Ethernet should do the job.
To be on the safe side, I did a Time Machine back up onto an external hard drive (we will get back to this!).
Here is the first warning: Migration Assistant, even using Ethernet rather than wireless, might not work. It did not work between my two computers. Both during the set-up process (where the computer asks if you want to transfer data from another computer) and after (I tried using Migration Assistant after set-up in case the "set-up" was the issue), the connection between computers failed.
Migration Assistant would get as far as "gathering info" and then the Air would announce "network failure" and the Pro would announce that the Air had stopped talking to it. A call to Apple and an hour on the phone with a fellow who had me try just about everything finally got me to a superior who essentially said, "The Air can't get past something on your Pro." Meaning whatever was interfering with the process could not be easily or quickly found and extracted. There was no solution to this problem. Migration Assistant would not let me copy my Pro onto my MBA, not wirelessly, nor with an Ethernet cable.
*First Warning:* if you want to copy your old machine onto you new MBA, and all you've got is an ethernet cord and Migration Assistant, you might be out of luck.
*Second Warning:* Use Time Machine to make a back-up of your computer and *know where that back-up is!*
As I said, I took precautions and put a copy of my Pro on an external hard drive. I highly recommend doing this as Time Machine really is remarkable and invaluable. Note that the first time setting up Time Machine takes hours, even for a smallish amount of gig. Make sure to turn off the "sleep" option on your computer and leave it to do the Time Machine thing while you either work on it for however many hours or go out with friends to a couple of movies. Once that initial set-up is done, Time Machine updates very quickly and invisibly.
So, the next step of the story was to hook up this hard drive to my MBA via USB. No problem. I ran Migration Assistant telling it, this time, to go with Time Machine back up. All should have been well...except the MBA *could not see* my back up! Migration Assistant asks "What disk?"--meaning which "backed-up disk" would I like to copy. At this stage it presents choices in a window.
But no choices came up in my window! The hard drive's icon could be seen on the MBA's desktop. And when I ran Time Machine on my Pro, it worked fine, showing me the back up. Preferences affirmed that the back-up had been made to that hard drive. Why couldn't the Migration Assistant find the back-up? Speaking of which...could I find the back-up? Opening up the Hard Drive and taking a look at what was on it, I found that, no, I couldn't really find that back-up. Actually, it was there and visible. It just didn't look like a back-up folder. It had the picture of a disk on it. It had to be clicked on to reveal what it was. So, there it was. What was the problem?
I'd gotten an expert to help me by now and once they got my back-up looking like a folder, a little red dot (minus sign?) told us the problem: it was off-limits. What? Choosing the folder and "getting info" we found that only my Pro "user" could "read/write" on it. Clicking on the "+" sign, we added the MBA "user" and gave them read/write privileges.
Now, at last, Migration Assistant could find the back-up and run it. And I got a perfect, "mini-me" copy of my Pro on my MBA. (Don't you love happy endings?) So, if you're trying to do something similar on your MBA, be aware of these two warnings. First, Migration Assistant may fail you if you're just trying to connect the two computers either wirelessly or via ethernet. Time-Machine is a much more reliable method (and pretty fast! My 40gb took about 30 minutes). Second, find your back-up and make sure the new MBA can read/write on it before doing the transfer. It should work and work well if you do that!
Hope this helps and supports others. Please, anyone with similar problems/solutions, feel free to use this thread to discuss them.
11" MBA, Mac OS X (10.6.6)
