Q: migration assistant
So disappointed with migration assistant. I have a brand new mac book pro. Cannot use it. It's just sitting in the box waiting and my excitement at getting a shiny new machine is dissipating.
I have an old Mac book pro (mid 2010) and lots of content. Having bought software (Office, Logic Pro etc.) for this machine I don't want to have to buy it all again. Migration Assistant will sort me out, so I thought.
So I ran migration assistant on both machines (with both machines connected to the same wi-fi network) and it seemed ok. The new machine saw the old one and though it said it would take 5-6 hours that didn't bother me. Sadly, after about 4 hours I came back and the connection had been lost. Who knows why.
So I decided to connect them using an ethernet cable. Quicker and more robust. The new macbook does not have an ethernet port so I looked into this and realised I needed a usb-ethernet adaptor. At the Apple store I had one in my hand but the helpful chap there said I would be better off with a thunderbolt cable. So I got one of those.
However, when I ran migration assistant on both machines the new one did not find the old one. Looking into this, I found that with thunderbolt connection you have to boot the old machine up in target disk mode (by holding down T when it starts). I did this and ran migration assistant on the new machine but it did not find the old machine or the disk. Depressed.
I tried to get some online support. I got a window saying that my chat session would start soon. But it never would.
The question here is: how do I best do this? Have I wasted my money on the Thunderbolt cable or if I buy an ethernet adaptor will I have the same problem (with the new machine not recognising the old one)? Is migration assistant the only way to do this?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. At present I have my new mac book just sitting there, looking sad. I don't really want to start using it until I get this resolved and, indeed, there would be not point - without the software I need to do things. Why should this be so difficult?
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015), OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)
Posted on Aug 15, 2016 10:34 AM
Just went through the same thing! I followed the instructions and updated my old MBP before starting, mistake #1, after the update all of my files in documents had vanished and relocated all over! Many of my photo logs are lost and only show the descriptions, no photos! After a full day of trying to transfer everything, I eventually used my "passport for mac" backup and manually transferred the files and tried to re-assemble all of my document folders. Prior to migrating and updating, back up or store your old mac files on an external drive, not time machine or cloud, that way you still have all of your original documents.
Posted on Aug 17, 2016 1:05 PM