Migration problem in Mavericks

Yep. Same problem. Looking all over for a solution, but still have not found one. Any help is greatly appreciated.

DSon't know if this is same problem, but when I connected the Time machine disk to the Mac (after disk reformat, reinstall of 10.6.8 and upgrade to Mavericks) it made a new backup.

I did not erase the backup disk and I can see that there is app. 300GB backup.

However, when I start the migration assistant, it just offers to migrete to the backup from today. So ot the moment all date lost !!!

Howdy all,

This may be a resolution to the issue here…it worked for me, so I am sharing in case this works for others.

In trying to migrate my older MacBookPro to a new MacBookPro, I was having the same issue that many folks are having where the Migration Assistant doesn’t see the external USB drive with my Time Machine backup. After reading through the posts by a user, Pondini, I discovered that I had the “bug” that was causing my automatic backups to exclude the Applications, System and Library folders. For those of you not familiar with this “bug”, it is described by user Pondini here: http://pondini.org/TM/D10.html. I performed the following steps which seemed to resolve the backup issue and subsequently allowed the Migration Assistant to “see” my external USB backup drive and perform the data migration:

1. I performed the “Full Reset of Time Machine” as described by user “Pondini” here: http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html. I first deleted the file: /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist. NOTE: I DID NOT IMMEDIATELY PERFORM A NEW TIME MACHINE BACKUP AT THIS POINT…I did the next steps first.

2. I quit ALL applications - including any that might be running in the background…like Intego’s Virus Barrier software that continuously runs “Real-Time Scanning” of my system. I believe that the Virus Barrier software was interfering with the Time Machine backup process and causing the Applications, System and Library folders to somehow be excluded from my backups. However, I cannot say this definitively. But turning off Virus Barrier seemed to solve the issue for me. Is anyone else with this issue running Intego’s Virus Barrier? Or perhaps something similar in the background?

3. Next, I did a fresh Time Machine backup selecting the same external USB drive I had been using. When this subsequent backup was complete, the Application, System and Library folders were there.

4. I turned on my new MacBookPro (running Mavericks), and started the Migration Assistant application. DO NOT PLUG IN THE EXTERNAL DRIVE YET. I selected the option to migrate from an existing Time Machine backup. Once at the screen with the spinning grey wheel that says: “Looking for sources…”, THEN I plugged in the external USB drive, turned it on and it was immediately discovered. I hit “Continue” and it transferred everything to the new MacBookPro as it was supposed to.

5. I have run subsequent Time Machine backups from my new MacBookPro running Mavericks and have not seen the exclusion issue reoccur, but I’ll keep an eye on it.

Hope this helps. Thanks to all for their input on this issue…especially user “Pondoni” - who I understand passed away before this issue was resolved.

Hi there

I had this problem and with the help of this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5531616?answerId=23760100022#23760100022

I found the solution was to uninstall Sophos antivirus (other AV programs may cause the problem too)

Try these steps:

1 Turn time machine off in system prefs (non-destructive)

2 Delete the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist file

3 Uninstall Sophos Anti-Virus with the 'Remove Sophos Anti-Virus' app

4 Restart machine

5 Turn on time machine again and ensure your normal drive is selected

6 It will start a normal backup but you should notice it is a large backup as now your system, users and applications folders should be included.

7 Migrate as before and the time capsule should be recognised in migration assistant now it can find the system folder.

Let me know if they are not detailed enough

This solution worked perfectly for me. Thanks! I will look for an alternative to Sophos as it seems the issue a is recurring one.

dgqc wrote:

This solution worked perfectly for me. Thanks! I will look for an alternative to Sophos as it seems the issue a is recurring one.

Take a look at ClamX AV. Like Sophos it is free and generally unobtrusive. That does not mean that it won't cause the same problem as Sophos, or another problem. That seems to be the nature of antivirus software. Alternatively you could, as do many Mac users, go "barefoot" without an antivirus solution. At the current state of the art the only viruses these AV programs can detect are Windows viruses because there are no known virii for OS X in the wild, therefore there are no OS X virus "signatures" for the AV apps to detect.

NOTE: this is subject to change at any time.

FYI I still use Sophos (just reinstalled it afterwards) and everything seems fine but will try and remember to do this when I next migrate by time machine! TM works fine on my new mac , just MA that was flummoxed by its parameter list antics.

I had exactly these issues as described in your email (thanks jaystad BTW).

My progress went:

1. Moving from 2009 Macbook Pro 10.9.1 to 2014 Macbook Pro 10.9.2 (want full hard drive shipped across)

2. Using Migration assistant on new 2014 macbook AFTER having run setup.

3. Migration assistant DID NOT SEE external USB 2.0 timemachine drive (as per above), so could not restore from there
4. Attempted using Migration Assistant to port direct from old 2009 Macbook to 2014 macbook. This failed repeatedly. It failed at the last step: ie "copying files across" would just indefinitely hang on scrolling bar without getting to "time remaining" progress bar.

5. Executed "full reset of timemachine" (as above) and created fresh full backup of old laptop to a vault on a timecapsule. This worked.

6. Migration assistant worked using this fresh time machine backup. New laptop seems to be operating fine.

7. Swear how much of my life had been wasted on this unresolved apple bug.
8. As ususal, buy lots of overpriced peripherals (mag2 power adaptors for extra power supply, ethernet to thunderbolt adaptors, firewire to thunderbolt adaptors, to make all old kit work with the new kit)

9. Re-evaluate happiness with apple products resulting in capitulation when confronting the immovable object of "the man" (ie apple)

10. Suck it all up and get on with life.