Migration Assistant Hangs at End?

Which I'm sure you meant!

It worked! You are a lifesaver, Tom! I was able to back out. When I re-migrated I didn't include Applications and it went pretty well. I did get a message toward the end saying my start up disk was almost full, but I didn't take any action other than to continue. What the heck is a startup disk and why would it be full.

Also, interestingly enough, even though I deselected Applications so they would not migrate, several still did, such as a journaling program called Per Se and a Solitaire game. Go figure!

Anyway, all is well in my new Macland! Thanks again. 🙂

ellabay, a startup disk is the hard drive, usually inside your computer, that stores your files, applications, and the operating system (Mac OS X) with which the computer starts up / boots / turns on. All disks have a fixed capacity, usually a number of gigabytes or terabytes like "512 GB" or "1TB". That message means you are almost out of storage space on that new disk. It's generally not a good idea to use all of the available space on your startup disk because then a) you can't save any more files and b) your operating system may behave unpredictably and cause problems. To create more space, you can delete some files (movies are usually especially large files) and then empty the Trash. I hope that helps!

I had exactly this problem migrating from two MB Pros with the same HW/SW specs, BUT running a disk check (under Applications | Utilities | Disk Utility - then Verify Disk) on the old, it turned out that there were disk issues on the old machine. Rebooted in Recovery mode (Restart and hold CMD + R) and choose Disk Utility - Repair Disk.

Fixed the problem.

P.S. Chat support from Apple works. I was annoyed that my install failed, but hey - what can they do when my files on the old machine were corrupted somehow? Be there to help!

Something got closed in my daughter's Air and cracked the screen. It spread. Pretty much impossible to even find the glass and then a problematic process to install. Replacing the whole top is not cost effective. I bought another same vintage Air that was essentially unused and wanted to migrate. Simple, everything fine until about 5 hours in, message, trying to re-connect. Never did but it had done stuff because the account was transferred requiring the old log-in on the new computer. I used the same Apple account on both. Fussed with it but neither machine could ever see the other again. Couldn't even re-install the original OS without erasing disk. Installing the last version still had the same problem. Did a complete Time Machine backup of original. Used Migration Assistant to "recover" from the backup on a separate USB drive. Ran to completion. Had to put in MS Office key code again for Office for Mac 2011 but other than that, 100% same as original.

What worked for me:

MA estimated 4 hours to migrate 200+gb from a 2012 MBP 13" 256gb El Capitan, to a 2014 MBP 15" 512gb El Capitan. At 23 minutes remaining, it seemed to hang, though the fans on the new box would spin up and down from time to time as if it were actually working on something. But it stayed at 23 minutes for probably 30 minutes.

From about page 3 of this thread, it was recommended to do the force-quit key combo. I did that on the new machine, it just gave the 'thunk' tone. Did it on the old machine - it brought up the force-quit dialogue. I hit escape to exit it. I then went back to the new machine, where the force-quit key combo then worked. I also escaped from it there as well - so ultimately everything was left as it was - however, the clock started ticking down again. about twenty minutes later, it finished, successfully, and I'm up and running on my new machine.

Again - this is what worked for me. Obviously it is not the One Solution for everyone apparently.

How much longer should I wait before just giving up on Migration Assistant completely and trying to find another solution for transferring files? It’s been 36 hours since I started to transfer documents only (no applications, no settings). It’s been ten hours since the message “less than one minute remaining” first appeared.

Migration Assistant advises “Connect an ethernet cable to transfer data faster.” I did so. When first hooked up, the transfer rate was 1256 MB/s. It quickly dropped to 3 MB/s, then perked up a bit, then dropped back down. Now it says the transfer is being done by wi-fi, even though the two computers are still physically connected by the ethernet cable. Can anyone tell me what is going on here? Why would the ethernet rate fluctuate like this? Why is the ethernet connection no longer even recognized? Any new suggestions about what to do/what might actually work here?

Do not use migration assistant. Even the people at Apple Store make fun of it. If you have a time machine copy of your old mac, use that. Last time when I migrate from an old iMac to a iMac 5K, it was stuck in 1 min left for over 10 hrs. I was lucky it finished. Recently when I changed to a MacBook Pro, I exclusively used the restore method. Took 2 hrs for 300GB. Press and hold the cmd and R buttons when you restart the new machine, choose restore from time machine if you have it on a plugged in USB drive (much faster than wireless). Follow instruction and that's it. It's simple and fast. I test restore on the iMac 5K a couple times after wiping the disk. All worked fine. Word of caution though - be careful with disk utilities on OS X El Capitan. Stay with Yosemite version if possible.

First, turn WiFi off.

Just for information... I used Migration Assistant to go from a 2009 to a brand new iMac. I had the same "1 second remaining" at the end and decided after 3 hours the process must have hung - so killed it. This was a "peer to peer" network both machines had set up for the transfer...

I killed wifi on both, linked them with a Cat5 cable and set it off again - this time 5 hours rather than 8...

I let it all continue overnight, and after 6 hours after the "1 second" had come up got a reboot of the new machine. It was a direct copy of the old one.

So advice is just let it go on and on to see if it works.

Don't know if the wifi being down or direct cable helped, but it's all fine now.

Aha . .

Did you include app, settings?

thx.

Tom

It pulled over everything as-is - so a complete clone.

Hey Apple! Hellooooooooooo! 182000 views of this one thread. Maybe just maybe we've got a problem??

RobinMasters wrote:

Hey Apple! Hellooooooooooo! 182000 views of this one thread. Maybe just maybe we've got a problem??

This is a user-to-user forum.

Those 182,000 views are mostly from the same half a dozen guys that never figured out, despite many posts, that a complete Time Machine backup and restore works reliably and takes less than half the time of a Migration Assistant transfer(that completes), and you have a backup.