Migration assistant is taking days and it keeps adding estimated time

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.

Hi Pablo,

Pablo de Brooklyn wrote:

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?

No, no, yes, no, and yes.

Be absolutely certain you are not using wireless - turn off AirPort on one or both of your Macs to ensure it will use the FireWire connection. The amount of time you are experiencing is not normal for a "wired" migration.

Set both computers to "never sleep" using Energy Saver.

If you're able to use a Time Machine backup of the old computer as a source for the migration, then do that. The Applications should be in there, as well.

All that you're describing about the old computer point to a failing hard drive, which will explain the behavior when migrating the data. Making any changes to its OS might only make it worse, since there's a chance the drive might fail completely in the process. When a HD begins to degrade, you need to avoid writing to it as much as possible, using it only to read data from it for backup purposes, if at all possible.

Also, for the transfer to "accidentally" go through WiFi, you need to "accidentally' select the network option in Migration Assistant, and "accidentally" enter the verification code on the old computer... Etc etc. My point being, not likely that the transfer is going through WiFi, or that that is what's causing the problem. My money is on a bad HD on the old computer.

Not abnormal... OS X Takes forever to calculate sizes in general, and with a Time Machine drive there are all kinds of unique hard links to take into consideration (awesomely detailed explanation, if you're interested).

Glad to hear you could get it done, though! Felices fiestas 🙂

Si! Vos también, no? No somos tantos en este sitio.. 🙂

Anduvo al final eso o no?

Buenísimo! Cualquier cosa, mi email es mi nombre de usuario acá, [arroba] gmail

I am doing pretty much the same thing, transferring all data from early 2008 MacBook Pro to similar but newer model with more memory, larger HDD, other upgrades, running Lion instead of Snow Leopard. The Lion Setup Assistant and Snow Leopard Migration Assistant steer the user to wi-fi by asking how you're connected to the Internet. Even though I plugged in a CAT5 ethernet cable AND a Firewire cable directly between the two machines (to let the Macs choose), the transfer of +/- 200 GB was going to take 15 hours, and the count was going up every minute or so, not down. I'm pretty sure the Macs were ignoring the hard-wire connections and using the wi-fi I had identified when asked. I stopped the transfer (had to turn off the new machine, as there was no Cancel option) and started over. But this time, I disconnected the wi-fi network and told both machines I wasn't connected to the Internet. Once transfer began this time, it said the process would take 51 minutes, and while I was reading these posts and writing this message, it's down to 28 minutes. Conclusion: Don't let the Assistant sucker you into using wi-fi.