Migration Assistant not finding NAS (What are Apples secret rules for a successful migration?)

[LuciusWrong]

What are the rules/ criteria required for migration assistant to find a NAS drive with a Time Machine backup on it?

I'm trying to migrate my time machine backup of my laptop (2019 16" mbp) to my new M1 Mac Mini. My backup is on a QNAP NAS, and it is connected directly to the mac mini via cat 5 cable.

Migration assistant would not find my drive during the setup process, so I completed setup without migration.

I succeeded in mounting the backup drive (i.e finder>go>connect to server>etc) that contains the backup I am trying to use. I selected the NAS backup drive in Time Machine, but I did not run a back up of the Mac Mini.

I can open and view all the files on my NAS through the Mac Mini, and Time Machine has discovered and selected the drive I want to migrate from. But Migration Assistant can't find the drive.

Is it failing because it's over a cat 5 cable? I'm about to go buy a usb C to USB 3.1 cable. I'd be happy if that works, but I'd also be annoyed about Apple not disclosing the requirements for a successful migration. Migration Assistant says the drive must be directly connected or "on the same network". Direct connect with a Cat 5 should meet both requirements.

In case someone asks, I have not tried to migrate directly from the laptop to the mac mini. Why? Because I need to know that I can restore/ migrate from Time Machine. What's the point in having a NAS and running backups if I can't restore/ migrate from that backup? Think of it like a test of the emergency system.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Have you tried to put the QNAP on your LAN, as you would normally, and connect your Mac Mini to your router via LAN/WiFi?

I had no trouble restoring my new '20 M1 MBP from my '14 Intel MBP TM backup in that configuration.

 

[LuciusWrong]

Have you tried to put the QNAP on you LAN, as you would normally, and connect your Mac Mini to you WiFi?

I had no trouble restoring my new '20 M1 MBP from my '14 Intel MBP TM backup in that configuration.

Directly connecting the QNAP to the Mac Mini, likely means the QNAP is not correctly advertising itself as a TM server and/or the Mac Mini is expecting to receive an address from your DHCP server.

Thanks. You comment about the NAS advertising itself as time machine server got the wheels turning. Those wheels haven't turned in quite some time!

For the record, I started with my normal network configuration, which is with both the Mac Mini and the NAS plugged into my router. When it didn't work, I began moving things around. But I did put it all back and tried again to test. That wasn't the problem.


But I think it's working now. It's transferring files at 91MB/s, so fingers crossed!


The issue I was having is I didn't know whether or not Migration Assistant was supposed to automatically find my backup volume. And when I tried entering a network address for the drive, I didn't get it right. There was no message saying I did something wrong; I would hit <enter> and the field went away. And nothing happened.

It turns out I needed to enter the entire address for the backup volume. I had been entering the address for the drive itself, but I did not also include the name of the backup volume in the address. I had just copied the address I used in the "connect to server" field when mounting the NAS, when setting up Time Machine.

My mistake was entering just SMB://(drive name).local. I guess I expected a more user friendly process, like with a finder window opening and letting me select the backup volume.

What actually worked is I entered AFP://(drive name).local/(volume name). In retrospect that seems kind of obvious, but I've almost never had to think about how networks work and how drive locations are named.


But a question. Does the network location entered in Migration Assistant need to be "AFP://"? Or would it also have worked if I used "SMB://"? I should have tried both just to see, but I didn't think of it until the file transfer was under way.

 

[alFR]

Both should work. In fact, IIRC afp has been deprecated since Big Sur came out and smb is now the supported protocol.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

But a question. Does the network location entered in Migration Assistant need to be "AFP://"? Or would it also have worked if I used "SMB://"? I should have tried both just to see, but I didn't think of it until the file transfer was under way.

Both should work, assuming you have your QNAP configured to advertise both AFP and SMB shares for the TM volume.

BTW, Apple depreciated AFP and moved to SMB for both shares and TM.

 

[storkinsj]

Yeah, this was stupidly difficult. I'm sort of amazed time machine restore in any form at all is working given all the problems I've had.

The comment about smb being the only supported share format made me look twice at the connect dialog in migration assistant. It auto-prompts you with "afp://example". Great. So in addition to being particular about the exact volume in a way that is inconsistent with other connection dialogs, it sends you down the wrong path. Shocking that no one cared to fix that.

For me even typing the volume directly did not work. Here's what worked to get it in motion:

-Yes install Mac OS first.
-Connect to the time machine volume with correct backup username and password
-Now fire up the migration assistant. It will log you out of the system, but it seems to remember the network share you had.
-When prompted for location, if I scroll all the way to the right I can see the volume. Select it and click continue.
-You can now successfully type user name and password.

Quality assurance past demo and simple cases is virtualy non-extant at Apple these days.

 

[Fishrrman]

Better way to do it:

Forget about migration over NAS.
Get a USB3 external drive (HDD or SSD)

Get either SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner.
Both will be FREE to use for this purpose.

Use SD or CCC to create a cloned backup of the old Mac on the USB drive.
Do this JUST BEFORE you migrate, so the backup is completely up-to-date.

When the new Mac comes, take it out of the box, put it on the table, but...
DO NOT press the power on button yet (or open the lid if it's a MacBook).

Connect the USB3 drive.
NOW press the power on button or open the lid.

Begin setup. When setup assistant asks if you wish to migrate from another drive, YES, you do. "Point the way" to the USB drive and give SA time to "digest" things.

SA will present you with a list of stuff to migrate. If it's not "a really big jump", you can migrate everything.

If, however, you're migrating from a very old Mac to a new one, you might think of UN-checking "applications", leaving the old apps behind (because of compatibility issues).

IF you created a CLONED backup that's mountable in the finder (TM won't work for this), AFTER the migration is done you can "test old apps" directly from the backup drive. If they work, you can them "copy them over". Remember -- your user settings were copied with your accounts during the original migration.

Migration can take a while, so be patient.
When done, you should see your initial login screen, so log in and "look around"...