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Migration Assistant consensus

R

RCedit

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 18, 2008
23
0
Hey folks.

My new MacPro arrives today. Good times!

Now comes the anxiety of getting all my "stuff" onto it. I've dome some searches regarding the use of migration assistant but have discovered some diverging opinions. I've heard to use it for everything. Some have suggested using it for prefs and settings but not hard files. I've also heard NOT to use it if I'm migrating from a G4, which I am.

Here's what I'm thinking I need:

MAIL - accounts, passwords, and prefs as well as old emails.

iTunes - prefs, playlists, etc as well as music files.

iPhoto - same as iTunes.

BROWSERS - Safari & Mozilla - bookmarks, keychain passwords, history.

DOCUMENTS.

My concern is that I keep my media for iTunes and iPhoto on a separate partition and/or FW drive. Can I trust migration assistant to find these or will it allow me to navigate to them?

I've never used MA (obviously) so I apologize if some of the answers to these questions are self-evident upon launching the program.

Thanks guys.
RC
 
RCedit said:
Hey folks.

My new MacPro arrives today. Good times!

Now comes the anxiety of getting all my "stuff" onto it. I've dome some searches regarding the use of migration assistant but have discovered some diverging opinions. I've heard to use it for everything. Some have suggested using it for prefs and settings but not hard files. I've also heard NOT to use it if I'm migrating from a G4, which I am.

Here's what I'm thinking I need:

MAIL - accounts, passwords, and prefs as well as old emails.

iTunes - prefs, playlists, etc as well as music files.

iPhoto - same as iTunes.

BROWSERS - Safari & Mozilla - bookmarks, keychain passwords, history.

DOCUMENTS.

My concern is that I keep my media for iTunes and iPhoto on a separate partition and/or FW drive. Can I trust migration assistant to find these or will it allow me to navigate to them?

I've never used MA (obviously) so I apologize if some of the answers to these questions are self-evident upon launching the program.

Thanks guys.
RC
Click to expand...

I have used it a few times, with different machines and have found it to work very well - albeit slow.

It will work well with everything you listed above.

My one suggestion would be to let it run overnight, or during a time when you aren't around. The progress indicator on a few of the "migrations" I have done as actually gone backwards (53 minutes remaining...55 minutes remaining...) that it was maddening. You are betting off not looking at it. :)

SCR
 
I just used it a week ago to transfer all my stuff off my macbook to my mac pro.

Everything worked well, and it didn't take too long (I only had about 50 gigs or so and took maybe 2 hours)

However if you are using a fan program like SMC make sure you don't have it on auto start, I did and for some reason it set my fans to run fast even when it wasn't on. I also had a lot of music and other files on my external, it had no problems copying the addresses for them on my itunes.
 
I used MA to migrate from my PowerBook G4 with 130GB on the drive to my Mac Pro and it worked perfectly. There were some interesting things that it did as a result like my startup programs which appear on the menu bar were migrated right over. Cool, but there were things that applied to the powerbook that did not apply to the MacPro - like showing the airport status as I do not have an Airport card in the MacPro, yet it showed it up there. Minor thing of course, but it surprised me that it just copied everything over.

I say to feel free to use MA. And like the previous poster noted, let it churn over night - mine took about 4 hours.
 
I just got my Mac Pro last week. I was going to use the Migration Assistant to move all my data/apps from my MacBook to my Mac Pro. But then I decided to just do a clean start. I set up a "krye" login on the Mac Pro and set out to move all my data over from my MacBook. That's when I said screw it, I'll just use the Migration Assistant anyway.

When I connected the MacBook via Firewire 400 and set it to Target Disk Mode, the Mac Pro said it was going to take 7.5 hours! Yikes! I cancelled that and told it to take my data from my Time Machine. What's great about my Time Machine is that while it has FW400 that the MacBook can use, it also has FW800 that the Mac Pro can use. I connected it to the Mac Pro via FW800 and let 'er rip. It transferred about 100 Gigs in about an hour.

All my data was moved over. (iphoto library, itunes library, documents, etc) My applications were moved over too. I launched all my applications just to make sure they worked. To my surprise, I had to reenter the registration information on just about all the applications that I had paid for that required a user name and serial number.

One strange thing is, the Migration Assistant told me that the user name of the account was already taken and that I had to rename it. (I guess because it was "krye" on the MacBook and "krye" on the Mac Pro.) So I did. I renamed it "krye2". It moved everything over into a "krye2" folder. I tried to login as krye2, but there is no login. I can only login as "krye". So I had to move all the stuff out of the "krye2" folder, and move it into the "krye" home folder.

All is OK now, I just replaced the default iWeb, iTunes, and iPhoto libraries with my stuff. But I was left over with an 800 Meg Library folder in the "krye2" folder. I deleted that. It doesn't look like I lost anything and it appears that I have all my data and all my apps work. I synced with .Mac and got all my mail and safari bookmarks back.

So, did I do something wrong? What was with the "krye2" home folder that I couldn't login to? And was it OK to delete the left over Library folder?
 
I have used migration assistant via two computers firewire and multiple times from one internal drive to another. It works really well. Just migrate EVERYTHING. It probably wont take the music files from a separate drive. It will take all of your Itunes files from your Music folder which includes the master playlist, album art, etc. So when you boot up your new Mac Pro just connect that drive to the Mac Pro and as long as it has the same "name" it will load all the same. For example, if your Itunes loads music from a drive called "Music Drive" make sure it has the same name on the Mac Pro and Itunes should load it all. If this drive is an internal IDE drive you can always buy a cheap 20-30$ enclosure for it. You could even consolidate your Itunes lib to your internal drive first if you have room.
 
UPDATE: Perfection! So easy. Very cool utility. Don't know why I was so anxious about it.
 
Lost User Files

Not so fast complimentarians (word?),

I used the Migrate Asst to move everything (I'd hoped) from a not-that-old mac laptop to a new Mac Pro.

Programs came over (albeit things had to be re-authorized), but seems like the user files did not. Maybe that's the wrong term. But all the files that were on the desktop, all the itunes songs, emails from the Mail program.... Most likely all other types of documents and photoshop files etc...

And when I open up the HD and click on Users, it seems like there is a folder representing the user from the previous computer. But in that folder, all the folders (desktop, Documents, Library, Music, Movies, etc) all have a little red Stop icon located on it.

And if I try to open anyone of them, I get "The folder "Music" could not be opened because you do not have sufficient access privileges."

I can imagine I am getting that message because the old computer is not still attached -- but why did the user files not get moved over? And why are those folders even showing up?

Anyone?
 
thanks1billion, I'm in the exact same situation you are in. I (today) used migration assistant from my iBook (leopard) to my new MBP. I had thought that I'd be able to open up iTunes, iPhoto, Mail, etc. and all my files and settings would be there. Instead all I got was a folder on my HD with a bunch of files with the same little red 'access denied' stamp on them.

What good is the Migration Assistant app if all it does is confuse you?

Anyone have any idea what I can do to get my music, photos and other stuff into the right place? Anyone know what went wrong, or if this normal?

Thanks in advance...
 
The work flow that worked for me

I migrated to my new MP from an old PM9600 G4 10.4.10. but since it did not have a built in firewire I had to take my drive out and put it in an external enclosure. My advise would be to be careful and follow my work flow. First I started the new MP and created an Admin user- make sure it does not match the user name you are migrating. Then I ran all the updates (from the pull down menu in the apple on upper left), then ran the updates again to catch the ones triggered from the last update. I ran MA at this point, and it copied all my files over in about 2 hours ( I went to dinner and came back and it was done). It copied all the apps and files over, but did not replace any apps with newer versions. After it was done I logged out and logged back in under my (old) username that I migrated over, and granted the account Admin priveleges. It kept all my serial #s and internet and iTunes settings. The only problem I had was installing the new version of Toast 8, as it was trying to use the old prefs. I deleted all the old prefs in Library/application support, and username/Library/application support then reinstalled with no problems.
My guess that if people are having problems with the permissions they did not create a new admin account first, then apply admin privleges to the migrated user account(or a combination of the 2). So I would try to grant Admin privleges to the user account in preferences/accounts first. Then if you still are having problems download a copy of 'Batchmod' (serch version tracker) and select the files you need to change privleges for. This should give you access to those files.
 
Worked perfectly for me X2 on a MacBook and a MacBook Pro

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
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