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50 hours to migrate??? Help...

Ivabign

Ivabign

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 27, 2011
424
45
SoCal
I bought my wife a new MacBook Air - I downloaded Migration Assistant on her Toshiba laptop and started the process - I don't have any hard connection between the computers - just wifi - and I have 12mps wifi at home -

I can't wait 50 hours before one of these computers has to be used for business - I couldn't see anywhere where I could use a USB cable to do the transfer - I have a USB external drive I am using to backup my iMac - it is 1TB so it has 850gb open space - Can I use this in any fashion? The Toshiba has about 120gb that was supposed to come over to the Air with Migration assistant.

Is there a way to stop this process? Is there a better way to do this???

There is nothing on the Air that I need to keep - so if I have to restore to factory defaults, there won't be an issue...

Jesus 50 hours?

Help!
 
12mb WiFi is bog slow and ancient, 50hrs isn't surprising. Try upgrading your router, use wired Ethernet where you can.

Any solution will probably take longer than 50hrs to purchase and setup. I'd just let it run.

Or backup the PC documents you need to the drive while setting up the MBA from scratch.
 
blueroom said:
12mb WiFi is bog slow and ancient, 50hrs isn't surprising. Try upgrading your router, use wired Ethernet where you can.

Any solution will probably take longer than 50hrs to purchase and setup. I'd just let it run.

Or backup the PC documents you need to the drive while setting up the MBA from scratch.
Click to expand...

Should have bought the Thunderbolt/Ethernet adapter - then this would have been possible....

Unfortunately she cannot be without a computer for the next 50 hours - If I close the program, does anyone know whether there are ramifications?
 
Just hold down Command+r when rebooting. BUT it's going to need to download OSX (approx 3-5GB) and sounds like that might take awhile on your setup.

That said, I've never interrupted migration assistant. It might be just fine after a reboot, sorry I don't know beyond that.
 
I actually had the option to quit the program on the host computer (Toshiba PC) and once done, the Air started "looking for the connection" - It also gave me the option of cancelling the transfer at that point - so I did and afterwards I looked at my Mac files and it was as if it never happened - no harm no foul..

Thanks for the info - re: recovery though...

I'll look at different options for data transfer - maybe use the USB 3.0 on both computers somehow.

I wonder if I backup the entire PC to my external drive, if I could somehow connect the drive to the Mac afterwards and transfer that way....

Oh well

Happy New Year!
 
When I tried this, it was obvious to me MA is more trouble than is worth, but then I knew where my data were located and could manually move them as needed.

Can I register my complaint again about the Air's lack of a built-in ethernet?
 
Mrbobb said:
When I tried this, it was obvious to me MA is more trouble than is worth, but then I knew where my data were located and could manually move them as needed.

Can I register my complaint again about the Air's lack of a built-in ethernet?
Click to expand...

you can, but it will be lost on a lot of us :p
 
Ivabign said:
I don't have any hard connection between the computers - just wifi - and I have 12mps wifi at home -

I can't wait 50 hours

Help!
Click to expand...

12mps = 1.5 megabytes/s
so 120 gb would take about 22 hours or so....at best.

when your ISP tells you your speed is 12mbps that means best case scenario with a hardwired connection. over wifi it could easily take as much as twice as long. especially if your bandwidth is being used by other sources (voip, other computers, netflix, phones, tablets, game consoles etc etc)

so that's definitely your problem...or at least your bottleneck as i'm not sure you can call it a problem when it's working as advertised, you know?

i suspect you would be fine to just stop it... your primary data won't be affected and i assume the client machine would be restorable. however i don't know.

assuming you figure that out you could try a few things - upgrade your internet speed and doing it via ethernet would be the quickest.

you could also run out and by yourself a cheap switch and hard connect the two computers together. this is straight-forward enough and should give you a transfer rate of almost 10x what you have now.

edit: by quickest i mean the easiest - not necessarily the fastest speed. i have a 50 mbps connection and i still do large data transfers over my local hardwired network.
 
Last edited:
I don't want to buy the Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter for $30 - and I have the external hard drives at my disposal - I am going to clone the PC hard drive via USB3.0 - and then migrate through my other USB3.0 port on the Air - pulling data from alternate location....

Should be faster

Does anyone have a preference for a program to close the PC drive?

(I have formatted the external drive using exfat - I am told that both Mac and PC can read from that format)
 
Mrbobb said:
Can I register my complaint again about the Air's lack of a built-in ethernet?
Click to expand...

Not with me. I don't need ethernet, stopped using it 3 or 4 years ago. If I needed ethernet, Firewire or a DVD drive, I wouldn't have bought the MBA.

As far as Migration Assistant goes, IMO it's a modern marvel. ;) Has worked flawlessly for me moving from a 2008 MBP to a 2011 MBA, and then to a 2013 MBA. A number of years ago I wasn't impressed with it, but Apple seems to have fixed most of the problems. It gives me confidence that I can move to a new machine without jumping through a lot of hoops. I always have multiple time machine backup disks. When moving to a new Mac, I just plug one in, go out and find something to do. When I come back a few hours later, my new Mac is setup exactly like the old one.

But you are trying to migrate from a PC to a Mac. I didn't know that was even possible with Migration Assistant (I learn something new here every day). :)
 
Last edited:
Your internet speed doesn't have anything at all to do with how quickly the transfer occurs, unless you are downloading from the internet (which you are not). What matters is the speed of your router. Are you using an old 802.11b router? Upgrading that would help. You would also be limited by the speed of the wifi card in the PC. What is it capable of doing?
Your best bet is cloning the PC to the free space on your external HD and transferring from there. It should easily be done overnight; not 50 hours.
Also, make sure you read:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4796
 
Ivabign said:
I don't want to buy the Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter for $30 - and I have the external hard drives at my disposal - I am going to clone the PC hard drive via USB3.0 - and then migrate through my other USB3.0 port on the Air - pulling data from alternate location....

Should be faster

Does anyone have a preference for a program to close the PC drive?

(I have formatted the external drive using exfat - I am told that both Mac and PC can read from that format)
Click to expand...

If you just let it run it would have been done by now.
 
blueroom said:
If you just let it run it would have been done by now.
Click to expand...

I'm so glad you were able to chime in.....

(without reading the above post stating that the computer would be needed before the 50 hours were up)

Do you just scan the forums looking for places to display your acumen?
 
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