Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Migration assistant over thunderbolt?

M

MallardDuck

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 21, 2014
1,742
3,434
So, question for those who have just migrated To their new m1. Has apple Fixed the migration assistant problem? For the past few machines, target disk mode runs dog slow (like usb 2 or 3 speeds), and a live transfer always uses the network. Thunderbolt would be vastly faster than either, but I've never gotten it to work, and have always resorted to a ccc clone to an ssd as the fastest method.

anyone get a real tb migration this go around?
 
Last edited:
Apple really needs to up their game here.

Switching from an M1 mini to my new M1 Macbook Pro took far too long.

I tried connecting direct cable to cable but had no luck making it go faster.

Considering the interfaces available on these machines, it's simply not good enough. I just want to migrate and get to using my new computer!
 
I generally backup to a TB3 external SSD, then restore from that onto a new system....
 
I did Migration Assistant from my i9 to M1Max. For some reason it stayed on the WiFi connection for a while before switching over to Thunderbolt (and went much faster).
 
Worked for me when migrating from an M1 MBA to M1 Pro MBP 14. Just connected a short TB cable and the Migration Assistant window displayed connection via Thunderbolt. Was done with a 350GB transfer in... <45 mins, give or take.
 
MallardDuck said:
So, question for those who have just migrated To their new m1. Has apple Fixed the migration assistant problem? For the past few machines, target disk mode runs dog slow (like usb 2 or 3 speeds), and a live transfer always uses the network. Thunderbolt would be vastly faster than either, but I've never gotten it to work, and have always resorted to a ccc clone to an ssd as the fastest method.

anyone get a real tb migration this go around?
Click to expand...
March 29, 2022: It still does not work with a Thunderbolt connection .I tried to set up my new Mac Studio by using Migration Assistant to clone my 2017 iMac. i had a Thunderbolt 4 cable successfully connected between the two macs but there was no way to switch connections within Migration Assistant. In fact I had to do several tricks just to get the connection to switch from WiFi to Ethernet. Yet, get this, the Migration app literally has a line of text right below the "Current Connection" that said "Connecting a Thunderbolt cable may transfer data faster".

So I called Apple Support. The tech did not know how to use Thunderbolt either so he sent an inquiry to the upper level support. They came back and said it won't work, but they could not answer why, or why the Migration Assistant told me it would work. In fact, they could not explain how to even select Ethernet over WiFi connections. All the directions they gave me failed to work. The only way I got Ethernet to work was to totally re-install MacOS 12.3 Monterey on the Mac Studio and use the Migration Assistant as if I were initially setting up the computer for the first time. Took about an hour to move over 1.3 TB to the Mac Studio over gigabit ethernet.
See attached photo and read the last line.
Not a good way to start off with a new $3K+ Mac......
 

Attachments

  • IMG_6721.jpg
    IMG_6721.jpg
    224.8 KB · Views: 1,030
  • Wow
Reactions: dysamoria
Thanks. I ended up doing a carbon copy cloned clone to an ssd, then migrated from that, just like the last few machines. I don't have ethernet dongles, and Wi-Fi is just horribly slow. Really odd that apple has abandoned best in class migration.
 
If anyone else is still having this problem, I figured out the issue for me with an iMac Pro to a Mac studio. I had to make a thunderbolt service on the original iMac pro under network system preferences, then while the Mac studio was on, I connected them and made sure they could see each other by going into the settings under the Thunderbolt bridge. It should show as active when you look at your thunderbolt ports.

After starting migration assistant on both, Thunderbolt worked. 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
  • Like
Reactions: dysamoria
Phnwhowhen said:
If anyone else is still having this problem, I figured out the issue for me with an iMac Pro to a Mac studio. I had to make a thunderbolt service on the original iMac pro under network system preferences, then while the Mac studio was on, I connected them and made sure they could see each other by going into the settings under the Thunderbolt bridge. It should show as active when you look at your thunderbolt ports.

After starting migration assistant on both, Thunderbolt worked. ??‍♂️
Click to expand...
What if you set up a brand new Mac Studio, with no user installed yet? You won't be able to get into the system preferences?
You switch on the Mac, and when the question comes if you want to set up your system with Migration Assistent, you still can connect the old Mac with a TB cable, but the new Mac will always choose Wifi...
 
vjpulp said:
What if you set up a brand new Mac Studio, with no user installed yet? You won't be able to get into the system preferences?
You switch on the Mac, and when the question comes if you want to set up your system with Migration Assistent, you still can connect the old Mac with a TB cable, but the new Mac will always choose Wifi...
Click to expand...
I didn't have to setup a connection on the new Mac. My old Mac was the problem.
 
I’m pretty sure migration assistant used to work fine over ethernet and thunderbolt 2? Someone correct me if I misremembered. Did Apple really remove previously existing functionality?
 
Glad I found this thread. Trying to setup a new Mac Studio from an iMac and getting ridiculously slow Thunderbolt 3 speeds on the transfer. While I have nothing useful to contribute, just glad to know I am not alone.

I should mention that there is literally one TB3 cable between both machines (no other cables/connections on either machine) and the new Mac Studio was NOT connected or configured to WiFi before migration began.
 

Attachments

  • thumbnail_IMG_3625.jpg
    thumbnail_IMG_3625.jpg
    103.3 KB · Views: 897
I recently had to restore / migrate complete users from older Macs to newly purchased MBPs 14" / 16", the Migration Assistant like mentioned just refuses to use TB connection regardless of how they are connected, it always "fall back" on using network which means WiFi ac or less (some Macs are as old as 2015). Even for a modestly sized user folder it takes like 3 hours.

At some point I said screw it and grabbed a 2TB NVMe SSD in a TB3 enclosure, just do a new Time Machine backup for each old Macs, and migrate that way. The transfer time went down to like 10 minutes each lol. OK the initial backup took some time too but is not even close to 3 hours if added up.

The good thing with modern Time Machine is that it forces APFS, so I didn't need to worry about partition size and just kept adding TM volumes to the SSD, they will share the same total 2TB capacity.
 
I am upgrading from an Mini M1 to a Studio. Ran migration assistant using ethernet. Migration assistant reported that I had 527GB of files to copy and failed as the Studio has a 500GB internal drive. Only problem with this is that the Mini also has a 500GB internal drive. So somehow I am managing to store 27GB extra on the mini drive. In fact the Mini shows 350GB used. My time machine backups are not up to date on the mini - need a bigger external drive. Before I go down this route does anyone have any ideas? Will using a thunderbolt cable change this? Thanks.
 
I upgraded from a base model M1 Air to a base model 14" M1 Pro--I didn't go Mac to Mac, but I did restore from a Time Machine backup on my SanDisk drive and I felt like it only took about 20-30 minutes to both get the new machine's OS updated AND get the migration done. Last step was claim all the old backups for the new machine as well, and I was good to go.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chinesedr
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back