Migration Assistant Hangs at End?

I have just bought a imac 21" to replace my old 17" which was running snow leopard. Tried migration assistant over wifi which failed about 3 hours in. Apple support had me use an Ethernet cable and connect the two machines. All went well until the last minute and then nothing moved. Rang apple again. Was told i probably have a corrupt application. I am currently backing up my old mac on a hard drive. When this is done I've been advised to migrate only files/folders using migration assistant again but not applications. I'm now thinking if I do this, will my iTunes music playlists transfer straight into iTunes or will they just appear in a file. What about the photos I have in my Kodak easy share? I need that application as it was. Been trying to sort this for 2 days and my brain is ready to explode! My 2 previous iMacs were second hand and I had no problems transferring stuff over. I'm retired and have gone back to work part time so I could buy this new imac. Am feeling very down about this at the minute :-(

I've been trying to get my new macbook pro to works for weeks. No matter what I try it gets to the last minunte then just hangs. Connected directly, wireless on .off doing from time machine save on set up and after setup.

THIS solved my problem!

NOT Migration Assistant or Setup Assistant, but using the "restore from backup" option in Recovery.

I was not trying to migrate data from an old computer to a new computer, however. My hard drive directories got corrupted, I couldn't fix it with the Disk Untility, so I had to reformat my hardrive and reinstall Mountain Lion from the recovery mode, with the idea of restoring my computer to the state it was before by using my my last Time Machine backup.

After reformatting and reinstalling ML, I was given the option of using the Setup Assistant, which is probably what you want to use when you first fire up a brand-spanking-new computer and want to transfer data and user accounts from an old computer. And I agree that using a Time Machine backup on an external hard drive is the best way to do this.

But I had the same problem with Setup Assistant that the OP describes with Migration Assistant – that is, it hung up when the process displayed "less than one minute left." This happened twice. When I rebooted, no data had transferred, and I was prompted to continue with the setup process.

After reading this post, the next time I rebooted, I held down the Option key and booted from the Recovery disk and chose the "Recover from backup" option. It worked like a charm.

In a couple of hours, my computer was returned to the exact state it was before the directory corruption, with the same user accounts and the most current version of Mountain Lion. I didn't have to fiddle with administrator acounts. I didn't have to update any applications or enter licenses or keys, either. Everything was current. I DID have to let Mail resync, as well as my DropBox and Google Drive accounts. And Aperture had to rebuilt its library. Photoshop and several other apps fired right up, though. All of the internet browsers I use even remembered my settings and I didn't have to re-log in to any websites I've saved my passwords for.

This might not work if you are trying to transfer data from an older version of OS X or a PC. I think that's what Migration Assistant is for. I'm not sure. Might be worth a shot, though, if Migration or Setup Assistant keeps hanging up.

Thanks, VajnaiD!

I got to a very long "less than one minute left" but eventually (5-10 min?) MA exited and transfer was successful. OS 10.8.2.

I was migrating a powermacG5 running 10.5.8 uptodate to a new mac mini, wasn't sure if 10.8.x or 10.9, purchased in the last month. The migration wizard worked on both macs, got the 50 gb transfer to be within 6 min after 90 min transfer, then saw the transfer time increase 1min at a time to 31 min. I finally cancelled the migration and restarted both macs. The old mac is just like it was before the attempt. Tne new mac mini will only come up in target mode now, can't seem to reset it back to use the wizard.

I was migrating them both through a 10/100 switch, and no problems with communication except this end of migration fiasco. I will be calling Apple, but thought I would add to the hung migration assistant thread

I was on "less than one minute" for an hour when I gave up. I was going to use the power button to shut down, seemingly my only option, when I decided to use the Force-quit sequence (hold down the Command & Option & esc keys). Inexplicably Migration assistant decided it was through and everything seem to be fine

I just migrated about 250Gb from my 2009 macbook pro (running Lion) to my new Macbook pro retina (2014). I didn't have the cables to connect manually so I did this over my wireless network. It was slated to run for about 33 hours and then it got hung up with 'less than a minute remaining'.

I waited for about 7 additional hours, and then it finished up. I know advocating patience when you have already been waiting over a day is a kick in the teeth, but it all ended up working perfectly.

Tried transferring two user accounts from an old Lion Mac Mini (using a TM backup) to a new Mavericks Mac Mini. After about 30 minutes stuck on the "Less than a minute" messaage, I tried the Cmd - Opt - Esc solution mentioned above but it didn't work for me. Instead all but 32kB of the transferred accounts was deleted, although their names remained.

Now I'm simply copying the User folders over.

Jobs must be rolling in his grave. Apple's core seems to be rotting.

So this is it, then? I'm on my second pass using Thunderbolt cable to transfer data from a 15" Retina to a 13" Retina [latest operating]. It is now Day Three and like others, I am now stuck on "less than a remaining" for nearly 2 hours. I use computers to actually do work not watch blue bars swirl. Is all lost? Is this is a tech glitch hatched by Apple execs who want $100 per machine to do this work for us? Migration used to be one of those magical moments for a Mac owner. No muss, no fuss. The Cmd-Opt-Esc solution. Does this mean I potentially lose everything I've spent three days waiting for?

I just tried Cmd-Opt-Esc instead of doing bodily harm. Nothing. Tried it on both machines. Nothing. Pulled the Thunderbolt cable from both. Nothing. What gives?

Hold down the power button until each shuts down. Try again. If it doesn't work manually move the files.

One thing to try, are your drives encrypted with file vault? If so decrypt first before migrating. It helped me.

... I tried and tried...and tried the migration software with the two computers connected and even the old mac set as target mode and didn't work, it kept hanging at the last remaining minute... and after a full day of trying the same, I decided to migrate FROM Time machine... And it worked!!

I had the same problem, so I ran Disk Warrior on my old iMac. It found and repaired a couple of bad files and then the migration worked like a charm.

This is not an ad for Disk Warrior, but once I learned that the guys at the Genius Bar use it I bought a copy. Best $100 I've ever spent, and a must for all Mac owners. If Apple has the capital to buy Beats for $3B, then they should buy the Disk Warrior code and bake it into Disk Utility.

Just my two cents...

This worked for me, too! I tried all of the other fixes recommended on this page (except Disk Warrior) and Migration Assistant would always hang up at "less than a minute remaining". I tried the from Time Machine option in Migration Assistant tonight (with my backup disk plugged in) and it worked like a charm -- and was quite fast, too (< 2 hours, all told). Thanks for the suggestion!

I gave my wife a new MacBook Pro after her old one just seemed too slow (it is over 7 years old). This Migration Assistant baloney is really making me mad. First, the super-fast Thunderbolt solution doesn't seem to work; the new Mac does not see the old Mac. I followed the directions precisely. If there are "tricks" or "tips" they should be on the Support page with the instructions, not buried in one of these "community" forums.

Secondly, we decided to try the hardwired Ethernet MA route. Turned off wireless on both machines. Seemed to get off to a proper start. However, after almost 24 hours of waiting, the transfer has been stuck at the "Less than 1 minute to go" for over 4 hours. And, during the transfer all day yesterday, it always seemed to say anywhere from "1 hour" to "5 hours" remaining.

This is just sickening. I've done disk transfer utilities myself. This isn't hard to get right... but for some reason, it seems Apple has taken its eye off the ball here. Upselling to the fanboys is probably their most reliable revenue stream, but maybe the iPhone thing has become just too big, and the Mac division has been relegated to the boons with no good engineers left.

She's on with tech support right now, I'll let you know how it turns out. However, in my opinion, the Migration Assistant should "know" all the tips and tricks as part of its built-in programming... IE, tell you you might want to check your disk first, maybe change some security settings for incoming connections (I've seen that hint when running down the initial Thunderbolt-doesn't-work problem), etc. The focus should be on that really great 100% smooth migration experience they've had in the past.

I used to be really impressed, but now I'm pretty disgusted. I'm going to inherit the old MacBook and intend to run Windows and Linux on it just to p*ss off every Mac fanboy.

Ugh. THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS later and what a disappointment.