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Migration assistant is taking days and it keeps adding estimated time

I set up Migration Assistant to move data between my wife's old MacBook Pro (2010) to a new 15 inch Retina MBP. It's been 21 hours since I started the process, and the time estimate keeps getting bigger. It started by telling me it would take 31 hours, at some points it revised the estimate to 75 hours, and even went up to 108. This morning it is saying 49 hours...
I am using the FW800 to Thunderbolt adaptor that came with the MBP.
I've been through this process before with other Macs, and I never ever experienced such ridiculously long times. I don't think there is more than 200GB of data that I am moving.

Is this normal? Should I wait TWO MORE DAYS to be able to use this machine?

Should I cancel and start over? If I stop the process and start it again, will it "credit" the amount of hours and data it has already moved? Is there any chance relaunching the process will speed it up?

thanks for any help

Pablo
Brooklyn NY

Posted on Dec 5, 2012 5:46 AM

Best reply

borgeano

Level 2

285 points

Posted on Dec 5, 2012 8:56 AM

Ouch. Sounds like there might some issue reading from the source, or writing to the destination. I would try to restart the process, since you've given it plenty of time, and unless the old computer had a 4TB drive full of data, that's just not normal.

A couple of questions:

1. Is the old computer still "functional"? (meaning, will it boot normally and all)

2. Do you happen to have a Time Machine backup of it? If so, you can use Migration Assistant to pull data from that instead of pulling from the computer, just in case there's an issue with the old computer's drive.

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17 replies

Jan 4, 2013 9:04 PM in response to mputzel

Mputzel -- Excellent point. It would be valuable for the MA prompts to tell users to shut off WiFi before attempting to use a hardwared transfer. Your comment brought my transfer time from 25 hours to 1.5 hours. Oddly, the Thunderbolt connections were not recognized so I needed to use Ethernet. Thank you.

mputzel

Level 1

14 points

Jan 5, 2013 11:37 AM in response to Paulc_someone

Paulc, pleased to hear it helped. After my experience, I invested a couple bucks in a CAT6 ethernet cable in case there's a next time. We may be headed for a wireless world, but we're not quite there yet. 😉

Migration assistant is taking days and it keeps adding estimated time