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

Migration Assistant Woes

BruceEBonus

BruceEBonus

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 23, 2007
1,355
1,362
Derbyshire, England
Ok .. Ok. If this is not the place to ask this ... then look away now .. however .. if it is then .. read on ...

I have just bought a new Snow Leopard Installed 27" iMac. Nice.

Current machine is a 24" iMac circa late 2008. Nearly as nice.

Plan - to migrate / copy all the files off the 24 to the 27. Ok .. hooked up with the ol' Firewire cable as necessary. Started Migration Assistant and followed the instructions to the letter. Great!

Said install all from my old machine to the new expecting a nicely cloned hard drive ... per claimed by my Apple Reseller store ... all works.

No. It doesnt. It said it'd copy about 300Gb over .. managed about half of that or less. MOST of the icon bar along the bottom is full of question marks and the only 'option' is to Remove Them From Dock ... eh? The only thing that seems to have copied is the desktop icons ... a few photos etc but nothing like what was 'promised'.

About a hundred gigs of stuff made it .... probably ... the only icons that are functional is stuff iike Mail Photo Booth erm .. yet Pages/Keynote etc nope .. just question marks ... and iMovie projects have disappeared too ... weird. Luckily I still have my old Mac so its not lost thank gawd.

Anyway ... I got through to the Indian Call Centre and the guy spent nigh an hour helping to his ability ... and we realised of course that the old machine was running Leopard 10.5.8 whereas the new machine is Snow Leopard.

He suggested I insert the 27" iMac install DVD into the older 24" machine but no .. it wouldnt upgrade it ... so a new InstallUpgrade Disc to Snow Leopard has been put on order and I shall be getting that mid week next week .... great ... I think ... I hope.

So then ... thats the question .. could the problem have arisen because I was migrating from Leopard to Snow Leopard?. IF I get this Upgrade Disc and upgrade my older 24" to Snow Leopard THEN Migrate over .. .will this do the promised claims of virtual hard drive clone/copy? Who knows?. Hopefully you lot!

So .. whaddya think?. Have you heard of this problem before? Where unless one OS is exactly the same as the machine its coming from to where its going shares the same system? I hope so, readers> cos I cant fart about re installing programs all over again ... when the bloke in the shop said "Yeah .. easy ... just plug in the cable .. run Migration Assitant .. all done ... just like yer old machine ...

Oddly too .. it said it would take about 2.5 hours to copy over ... well . it was doing .. then about half way there .. voila .. suddenly ... about an hour before it was gonna finish ... it just .. finished ... with a vague message abou thow Epson Scanner software wasnt compatible ... if only .. in fact mos arent working .. whats happening?

Cheers in advance ... til this dedicated disc drops on me doorstep ...but even then I'm not so sure about its impending success as claimed by Apple Help Club...

Er.. thats it .. cheers y'all

Bruce:mad:
 
i'm far from an expert in this area but my understanding is that the Migration Assistant is NOT a clone. I used it twice this year from my iMac to a MB, which I sold, and then to my MBP. It took a while to transfer and I was able to select what to move. But, some software still had to be reloaded or registered to work.
 
Do you not back it all up with time machine? Is it not possible to copy them over using that?
 
migration assistant IMHO is kind of iffy.

personally, i would start over (erasing the internal HD), put a fresh OS on the Mac, and use the more reliable setup assistant to migrate my data over.

Pondini has a fantastic walkthrough here.
 
Jolly Giant said:
migration assistant IMHO is kind of iffy.

personally, i would start over (erasing the internal HD), put a fresh OS on the Mac, and use the more reliable setup assistant to migrate my data over.

Pondini has a fantastic walkthrough here.
Click to expand...

Cheers Giant! I'll hae a lookie at that link, mate

BUT my naive hopes that "aye .. it'll copy the lot oe'er like ye've nivver changed yer machine ..." was somewhat optimistic .. and i have suddenly come over all PC ... malaised! Cheers!
 
Jolly Giant said:
could you point me to documentation that verifies your statement, please ?
Click to expand...

There really isn't any source, it's more general knowledge. Go digging in both assistants you'll see that both GUIs and system files are nearly identical. Thus, they share the same code base and overall abilities.
 
Intell said:
There really isn't any source, it's more general knowledge. Go digging in both assistants you'll see that both GUIs and system files are nearly identical. Thus, they share the same code base and overall abilities.
Click to expand...

What I really wanna know is .. was I making things a lot worse by moving from a non Snow Leopard machine (me old iMac 24) to a Snow Leopard machine (me new iMac 27) and do you think by consequently upgrading to SL first before migration .. this might result in a more satisfactory ending? Cheers !!!
 
BruceEBonus said:
Was I making things a lot worse by moving from a non Snow Leopard machine to a Snow Leopard machine?
Click to expand...

No, the Migration/Setup Assistant was designed to move your info across. But make sure you use the SL version as it will know what to do over on the Leopard side.
 
Intell said:
No, the Migration/Setup Assistant was designed to move your info across. But make sure you use the SL version as it will know what to do over on the Leopard side.
Click to expand...

You are saying .. use the 24" iMac ... after SL upgrade to control the move over via MA ... when both machines are SL'd ... so go 24 to 27 new mac .. once both compatible OS wise?
 
Do this: Make both iMacs be on the same network. Turn on file sharing on the Leopard iMac. Open Migration Assistant on the Snow Leopard iMac. When it asks you where the old data is select a network volume and then choose the Leopard iMac. It'll take a while to transfer everything. Just let it go and it should all be good when done.
 
Intell said:
Do this: Make both iMacs be on the same network. Turn on file sharing on the Leopard iMac. Open Migration Assistant on the Snow Leopard iMac. When it asks you where the old data is select a network volume and then choose the Leopard iMac. It'll take a while to transfer everything. Just let it go and it should all be good when done.
Click to expand...

I just wondered why it only copied about a third of the stuff over ? And neverf installed about 70% of the programs ... I just told it to copy all from the old machine to the new ... and presumed it would happen .. said it would take about nigh three hours .. took about half that eventually .. and I am hoping as Apple are sening me out a free SL upgrade disk next week .. by upgrading me old Leopard to SL THEN migrating this will lcrack it .. OR do I tell it to copy from a Time Machine backkup etc .. basically I obviously dont wanna lose all m eprogs and mor eimportantly me iMovie files .. this would be a LOT of work lost .. argh!!! :cool:
 
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