Migration Assistant Hangs at End?

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.

-----First, the super-fast Thunderbolt solution doesn't seem to work; the new Mac does not see the old Mac.

It could be that the old mac does not have a thunderbolt port. The external display port and thunderbolt port fit the same. One has a lighting mark near it, the other does not.

....and weeks later, not a single reply to this issue from the fools at Apple Support.

APPLE, YOU HAVE A SERIOUS BUG HERE!

I just spend no less than 20 hours. When I finally had to give up. I quite the Mountain Lion side and the Mavericks (receiving brand new Pro) showed a single error saying : The following apps are NOT compatible on the receiving OS (It was the lame Telestream Mac Video player). That was the ONLY thing it said it didn't migrate…yes, that's right 256gigs of migration, one app/plug-in isn't compatible, you tell me for HOURS that it's in the LAST MINUTE. I finally couldn't wait any longer.

So what happens after I log into my new machine? NOOOTHING WAS ON IT, NOTHING.

Apple, get serious…now you are loosing me, and I have been here since Apple fest in the 80's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

People don't want to start from scratch because of a single migration error aaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!

I tried to use Migration Assistant to move my data from a 2013 Macbook Pro running Mavericks to another 2013 Macbook Pro, also running Mavericks, the two machines connected by Thunderbolt. After about an hour the message "less than on minute remaining" appeared. After another four hours the message had not changed, so I turned off both machines and tried the whole process again. The problem recurred.

This happened to me on previous attempted transfers on previous versions of Mac OS, always with the same version on both machines involved in the transfer.

This must be a bug. Apple ought to have addressed it by now.

HT4796

So here is a sad story from a truly disapppointed Mac user.

I have a MBP Early 2011 which suffers from the broken-graphics-controller issue. A 500 EUR replacement of the logic board did not help at all but that's another story.

So I want to migrate my 450GB of data and apps to a spare machine - another Early 2011 MBP. What I did so far to migrate data and apps:

• Install a fresh and clean Mavericks on the target machine
• Do a full file system repair on the source
• Install all possible updates on both
• Connect both using Thunderbolt
• Start migration assistant first on source and second on target - if done the other way round it would copy only 156 kB of data which is not all I need
• Select to migrate users and apps.
• At start the migration tells me that it will run for 5 hours, the number oscillates somewhat but thats OK
• Next morning the systems tells me that it will be finished in less than one minute. Hooray.
• This figure seems to be a bit inaccurate. Another 36 hours later it still insists to be finished in less than one minute. Suboptimal.
• It also sometimes tells me to use a Thunderbolt cable to speed up the process. Dear chap, you **have** thunderbolt plugged in, just use it.

• When listening to the sounds of the disk drive it seems that something is still copying data.
• I am able to ssh into the source machine, iostat tells me that there is something going on on the disk an 8-10 MB/s.

• I have no idea if the migration uses Thunderbolt or perhaps WIFI even if I have connected both Macs using a genuine Apple Thunderbolt cable.
• I did not change Power saving settings but I guess, that the migration runs even if the screen goes blank as I can hear disk sounds when the screen is blank.
• I have no idea if and when the transfer finishes and I do not want to restart the whole nightmare just for a try.

Dear folks at Apple, I have spent a fair amount of money for your products because in the past they just worked really nice and easy and forever. Even if the price tag was higher than the W* competition I thought the ease of use and the quality was worth it.

The current situation with MacBooks going down after just three years and not being able to migrate data in a reasonable time and without reasonable information is really really bad.

Apple fix this. This problem is very old. It's the first encounter for users that buy their 2nd+ Mac and it's very disappointing. It kills loyalty. Like one of the respondents says: migration software isnt the hardest to do and if you spend 3K on a mac you don't want to spend a week gettig it up.

I eventually had to use the Targeted Disk method and open my MacBook Pro as a hard drive connected to the new iMac with a Thunderbolt to Firewire converter i bought at Fry's. Migration Assistant would hand up and never explain why. I was clicking all three options and it turns out that a handful of files were bad and Migration Assistant could not handle it. However, when I transferred the files in Target disk mode i was able to babysit the file transfer and skip the files that were "corrupt". They were some Final cut Pro video files that I did not need anyway or could have lived without. It took several hours to transfer my files. After that was complete, I used Migration Assistant to bring over the Apps and plugins. Migraine Assistant had no problem pulling over the Apps and libraries.

I had to reload the serial numbers for a few of my Apps, especially the Red Giant stuff, Final Draft, Plural Eyes, and FadeIn. I was facing a heartbreak of sorts because the iMac does not have a cd/DVD drive and a few of my software was on the originals CDs. I opened up each APP just to make sure that they still worked. I lost two days using Migration Assistant when i tried to use it to transfer the files. Going forward I will use Time Machine to transfer. I spent about 4 hours with Apple Support to finally figure out how to transfer the stuff over.

Using Yosemite on a 27" mid-2011 iMac.

I just got my iMac back from the shop after having to have the hard drive replaced, thankfully under warranty. The certified Apple tech told me use Migration Assistant to recover from my Time Machine backup. After 30 minutes, I grabbed my MacAir and googled, ending up here.Like others have reported, all was fine until it got to the last minute and then just sat there. I immediately when back to the iMac, forced quit via the power button, rebooted, double-clicked on the back-up drive, and selected the folders I wanted to move over. Sure it took some time to complete given I'm moved about 200GB of data, but less than predicted and not longer than Migration Assistant before it hung. Never again will I even try the Migration Assistant, just go directly to my Time Machine backup and recover directly from there. Now just to restart Time Machine with my new hard drive.

Just want to share my experience from last night. Picked up an iMac retina from the store to replace my 2008 iMac (250GB HD). Started the migration using Assistant at about 7pm. The remaining time fluctuated wildly up to 9-10hrs. It got to the "less than a minute left" mark at about 11:45pm. After about 30 minutes in the same state, I too started googling like tnorth and wound up here. I was thinking this wasn't good and dreaded going through all the troubles trying to migrate to this new machine. I went to bed about 12:30am thinking I am going to pay them $99 for one-to-one and let them deal with the migration. I left the machines alone because I was holding out hope that it would finish. Well, IT DID!!! Went to check before I left for work at 7:30am and there it was - "migration complete". All users accounts were migrated and things seemed to be in place (didn't really have time to check every single thing). I read somewhere that if there are lots of small files, it would take forever because traditional HDs are not every efficient in seeks and a high number of small files will cause it to take a long time. But the "less than a minute" thing is truly misleading. I did not try to find out when it actually completed so I can't say how long the entire process took (5.5hrs + ??). I read a few posts preaching patience. In this case it paid off. Good luck to all.

I have a similar issue going on right now with this: I just bought a brand new Macbook Pro from Apple last week (Mid- 2012), because my 2008 Macbook Pro crashed (Not the Hard Disk as a new one was installed a year ago; it had something to do with the screen or something internally that failed), and I used an Enclosure to transfer everything onto the new computer while using Migration Assistant to go through the process.

Now, before I did anything, I turned off Firevault and waited 8 hours or so until everything was decrypted; and I also changed my Energy Settings so the computer wouldn't put itself to sleep. I then started the process with Migration Assistant and it took almost 4 hours (it was stuck on "about 2 minutes remaining" for over an hour), but everything went smoothly and then the computer restarted itself. Now here is where the problem is: my computer screen has been stuck "Starting up..." on the "Transferring Your Information, Finalizing your Migration" page for 24 hours now. I have restarted the computer about 20 times and it boots up, but then falls back on this page immediately. I have tried the "option & command & esc" thing, as well as "option & command & delete" with nothing happening at all. The computer seems frozen in this state, although it does boot up with the grey bar every time I turn it off & on by holding down the power button...

Where do I go from here? I've read through this entire thread and many others numerous times searching for an answer, but have found nothing on this. Any help would be greatly appreciated, TIA.

Give up on Migration Assistant. If you have a Time Machine or other hard drive backup, you can access that directly from the attached hard drive, but open via the drive, not via Time Machine. Copy the files over to you new machine. I'd suggest just copying data, pics, etc., not application, instead re-installing them fresh. If you are attaching to another computer, you should still be able to treat that as a hard drive and do the same thing. Hope this helps.

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I do not have Time Machine, I've never used it before; and my old computer is totally fried and not functioning at all. I don't have an external hard drive either, just my hard drive from my previous Macbook that's now in an Enclosure. How can I get my Macbook out of this screen/state it's in? It won't let me do anything or go anywhere with it. Thanks for your help.

You should be able to do a hard reboot. Hold down the power key for 20 seconds. Release, wait 5 seconds, and then reboot. If that doesn't work, as soon as you hear the chime on the next reboot, press the option key so you can select the drive to boot from Worst case scenario, that doesn't work, then reboot with the T down to start up in terminal mode and "install" i.e., copy your data files from your old Mac, even the complete transfer if you want. It will take a firewire cable to connect the new mac to the old mac.

~tere