migration assistant failed, 200gb hard drive space missing

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migration assistant failed, 200gb hard drive space missing

Hi there. I tried to run Migration Assistant to transfer my files from my early 2008 Macbook (OSX 10.5.8) to my brand new Macbook pro (OSX 10.7 Lion) overnight last night. Unfortunately, late in the process, the power cabe for my source aptop came unplugged, stopping the transfer process at 3 minutes remaining. I tried plugging it in again to see if I could start the process from where it left off to no avail. However, when I checked the hard drive on my new laptop, only 530 gb of my 750 gb remain, the amount that was supposed to transfer from my old laptop to this one is here, but not accessible. Is there any way for me to a) access these files or b) delete these files and start over? I'm assuming if I just run migration assistant again, I'll just use up another ~175 gb of space.

Posted on Feb 14, 2012 10:54 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

macjack

Level 10

111,168 points

Feb 14, 2012 11:05 AM in response to Caitlin Kantor

Couple of things here...

Did you use Migration Manager the first time you booted up the MBP? I ask because if you don't and do it later (which IMO shouldn't be a choice) Migration Manager usually creates a new account. You may want to check in /Users to see if that's so.

3 minutes remaining is a red herring because 3 minutes can mean anything from an hour to 1 minute. They minute counts are not accurate a all.

Try restarting the MBP, it may pick up where it left off.

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Answer 2

Feb 14, 2012 11:15 AM in response to macjack

I didn't use it the first time, as I bought it at the mac store, and didn't have my old laptop with me. No other user account unfortunately. The only evidence that the migration ever occurred is that there's ~200gb space used on my hard drive that wasn't used before, and a few random word documents from my old computer are now in my downloads.

Looking at my previous post, I can see I didn't express myself very well. My source laptop ran out of battery near the end of the transfer, and so I had to turn it back on after plugging it in again, but migration assistant had stopped on that laptop, while my MBP was acting as if the transfer was still going. tried starting up MA on the source laptop again, didn't work. MA on MBP stayed frozen at 3 minutes, so I quit out of it.

I'm going to try restarting the MBP to see if that does anything now. Thanks for your suggestions!

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Answer 3

macjack

Level 10

111,168 points

Feb 14, 2012 11:17 AM in response to Caitlin Kantor

Yes, let us know what happens on restart.

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Answer 4

Feb 14, 2012 11:25 AM in response to macjack

Restarted, nothing happened. Also, checked the paths for the old word docs I thought were from my old computer: turns out they're just the ones I've attached to emails. Should I clear my HD and start over? I've got an appointment w/ express lane at 4pm, hoping they'll have some solutions for me.

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Answer 5

macjack

Level 10

111,168 points

Feb 14, 2012 11:34 AM in response to Caitlin Kantor

Caitlin Kantor wrote:

Should I clear my HD and start over? I've got an appointment w/ express lane at 4pm, hoping they'll have some solutions for me.

Well, since your MBP shipped with Lion, you'd need to do Internet Recovery. If you did that, you'd probably miss your appointment. I'd keep the appointment and let Apple do the system restore, where they can do it a lot faster.

Good luck with it.

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Answer 6

May 31, 2012 6:10 PM in response to Caitlin Kantor

Did you get this fixed? I have the exact same problem right now.

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Answer 7

Jul 27, 2012 1:02 AM in response to tlazaroff

same problem here. i have on the new retina macbook no space anymore. I think that the migration assistant doesn't check for the available space, and the system needs more than before? At any rate the hard drives are the same and on the macbook air there are still 11 GB free. The migration assistant froze on the retina macbook and now only 1 GB left on the harddrive. how to delete the temporary files, I'll migrate manually afterwards... 😟.

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