You can exclude anything from a CCC backup, at least from the 4.x version, so I imagine current versions will offer that also.
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What's the trick to get Migration Assistant to actually work?
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I mean using either of those two methods independent of MA. That is, for TM there is an option in the recovery menu to restore from a TM backup. And, for CCC to just clone the old drive to a blank new drive. So, for those two options, I don't think there would be a way to exclude the things I need to exclude in order for the restore to fit onto the new drive.MA with a TM backup or CCC clone works exactly the same way it does as you doing it Mac to Mac like you are now. The only difference is you just choose one of those drives as the source instead of another Mac. Then you will get the exact same screen where you can exclude Photos or whatever.
This be approximately 90 billion times faster then doing it over wifi.
I'm not sure using MA but just selecting either a TM backup or my CCC backup would be any different from what I'm trying right now.
The end result will be exactly the same... but my point is this will take many moons to complete over wifi, where if you run MA using either a USB attached TM or CCC backup, it will be far faster.
Ah, okay, I understand what you're trying to say. Okay, that is a good point.
So got home and there was no change from when I left in the morning, looks like both computers lost connection to each other.
Anyway, long story short - whatever did migrate ended up hosing the system to the point that I couldn't boot into Recovery, only Internet Recovery.
So, El Cap is being downloaded and installed right now via Internet Recovery after which I'll have to upgrade to High Sierra.
Then, maybe I'll try either migrating from a TM backup or migrating from my CCC clone.
Again, I have to migrate rather than restore b/c I need to be able to exclude my photos and music to make everything fit on the smaller SSD.
Fun times
Anyway, long story short - whatever did migrate ended up hosing the system to the point that I couldn't boot into Recovery, only Internet Recovery.
So, El Cap is being downloaded and installed right now via Internet Recovery after which I'll have to upgrade to High Sierra.
Then, maybe I'll try either migrating from a TM backup or migrating from my CCC clone.
Again, I have to migrate rather than restore b/c I need to be able to exclude my photos and music to make everything fit on the smaller SSD.
Fun times
Obviously a wired connection is generally going to be faster than a wireless one. Have you tested the speed of your wireless network? Using a web calculator given the known wireless transfer rate you can guesstimate how long a wireless transfer will take.
I have had multiple failures of the migration assistant. For example, we just purchased 7 or 8 new MBPr15 and not a single one successfully completed the migration assistant. In the past I only remember a single success ( 2 or 3 years ago ). I should bring it up to our local Apple Engineer.
When I set up a new OS drive, I do it from a clone of my old drive, using MA for just the files I want that are listed in my Home folder. The apps I do separately, by getting fresh downloads of purchased apps from the App Store, their source, or manually migrating them from the clone. This is a selective process and gives me a chance to get rid of things i will not be using on the new drive. Doing it from a clone is a lot easier/faster than using TM. I've never had a problem in all my years of using all my Macs using this strategy. I also do "clean installs" of new OSs.
So just returned from some travel and, in the meantime, ordered a 512GB SSD SSUBX off eBay at a really good price.
Installed it last night without problem and then installed High Sierra and ran all the updates with a generic, new user admin account.
Debating whether to try migration assistant again (with a directly connected USB hard drive backup) or go the CCC route and just clone my backup to the Macbook Pro.
Will update again once I get around to this.
Installed it last night without problem and then installed High Sierra and ran all the updates with a generic, new user admin account.
Debating whether to try migration assistant again (with a directly connected USB hard drive backup) or go the CCC route and just clone my backup to the Macbook Pro.
Will update again once I get around to this.
Okay, so I started with Migration Assistant using a CCC backup on an external USB 3.0 SSD, figuring this should be lightning fast (at least when compared to when I was trying to do it over wifi). However, after starting it and having it sit for something like half an hour with no movement and no time change, I decided to just cancel it and finally take someone else's advice and try a restore from my CCC backup directly to the internal SSD.
It took about an hour but copied over the full 400GB without any issue. I was able to boot from the internal SSD and it was like I was on my old iMac again.
Happy, right? Not exactly. The new problem is that my System usage has ballooned to about 90GB on the MacBook Pro whereas it was only about 30GB on the iMac. My iMac had about 150 to 160GB free, but the cloned MacBook Pro only has about 100GB free now.
After some research, it looks like it's a common issue, especially with High Sierra in which Time Machine backups are even stored "locally" on the internal drive so that some kind of backup is always available even if your external Time Machine is not connected. Apparently, there are some Terminal commands to identify the local backups and another command to try and delete those local backups, one by one, by date.
Of course, these solutions didn't work for me (or others apparently).
So now it seems I have triple the amount of System usage on the MacBook Pro as compared to what I had on the iMac. Ugh.
I'm thinking about wiping the internal SSD again, reinstalling High Sierra from Recovery and trying the MA overnight to see what happens.
I'm relatively techie and having problems with this stuff. I can't imagine what lay people do when they want to migrate to a new Mac.
It took about an hour but copied over the full 400GB without any issue. I was able to boot from the internal SSD and it was like I was on my old iMac again.
Happy, right? Not exactly. The new problem is that my System usage has ballooned to about 90GB on the MacBook Pro whereas it was only about 30GB on the iMac. My iMac had about 150 to 160GB free, but the cloned MacBook Pro only has about 100GB free now.
After some research, it looks like it's a common issue, especially with High Sierra in which Time Machine backups are even stored "locally" on the internal drive so that some kind of backup is always available even if your external Time Machine is not connected. Apparently, there are some Terminal commands to identify the local backups and another command to try and delete those local backups, one by one, by date.
Of course, these solutions didn't work for me (or others apparently).
So now it seems I have triple the amount of System usage on the MacBook Pro as compared to what I had on the iMac. Ugh.
I'm thinking about wiping the internal SSD again, reinstalling High Sierra from Recovery and trying the MA overnight to see what happens.
I'm relatively techie and having problems with this stuff. I can't imagine what lay people do when they want to migrate to a new Mac.
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Try this to ditch the local snapshots in one run.
Code:
tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates / |grep 20|while read f; do tmutil deletelocalsnapshots $f; doneThank you for that. I did find that command last night and tried it, but didn't see any change in the System usage.
Interestingly, if I perform the command to identify the local backups, none show up anymore, even though I had only deleted maybe 2 or 3 out of 12 to 15 that showed up the first time I tried to identify them in Terminal.
One difference I noticed is that when I first ran the command in Terminal, it showed my computer as having the name of my old iMac (pinkoos iMac). Sometime between then and whenever later, Terminal was showing the name of my computer as the new one I gave it (pinkoos Mac). So, is it possible Terminal is not in the correct "directory" or something like that and that's why it's not identifying all those local backups anymore?
Interestingly, if I perform the command to identify the local backups, none show up anymore, even though I had only deleted maybe 2 or 3 out of 12 to 15 that showed up the first time I tried to identify them in Terminal.
One difference I noticed is that when I first ran the command in Terminal, it showed my computer as having the name of my old iMac (pinkoos iMac). Sometime between then and whenever later, Terminal was showing the name of my computer as the new one I gave it (pinkoos Mac). So, is it possible Terminal is not in the correct "directory" or something like that and that's why it's not identifying all those local backups anymore?
No.. those files would be at the root of the drive and not impacted by anything you did.
Let me get this straight... you made an admin account then after that imported using MA.? If you did that, that can cause all sorts or permissions problems.
http://oldtoad.net/pondini.org/OSX/MigrationProblems.html
Read this paying attention to the section about userIDs.
Essentially, the first account on a Mac is assigned userID 501. So if you already have an account 501 then use MA to import another 501 (even if named differently) it causes problems.
Hmm... try running this and give it a bit to finish. That will show all the base folders in GB, including system and hidden folders.
Code:
sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /So I opted to do a nuke and pave and start all over and....
[doublepost=1534254309][/doublepost]...Success!
1. Booted into Recovery, wiped the internal SSD
2. Reinstalled High Sierra from Recovery
3. Created a generic admin account, logged in and ran any more updates (the only one was for iTunes 12.8)
4. Attached my external USB 3.0 SSD containing my CCC backup of my iMac
5. Started Migration Assisstant
6. Excluded Applications from the items I wanted to migrate, but left everything else checked off
7. Literally half an hour later, MA was done. It even showed accurate timings in terms of time left, etc.
8. Logged into my user account and everything was as if I was on my old iMac
9. Deleted the generic admin account I had created in step #3 above
10. Went to Mac App Store and proceeded to reinstall the applications that I had installed on the iMac. Went to individual developer's websites for apps that were not from the MAS.
11. One cool thing was that in my Dock, any applications that were not installed but had been in the Dock had a question mark instead of the application icon. Hovering over the question mark told me what application it was. Once I reinstalled the application (either from MAS or from developer's website) and launched it the first time, it situated itself back in the proper location in my Dock, replacing the question mark that was there before.
Checking my storage information, my System usage was back down to the normal 30GB rather than the 90GB it was using after having done the CCC restore.
You are lucky this did not cause problems due to the issue I mentioned up in post #39.
If you want to do it this way, the best practice is to make an admin account like you did and that will be userID 501. Then make a second admin account that will be 502. Then delete the 501 account and run MA. That will allow the 501 MA account to come in without conflict. Then you can login to the imported 501 account and delete 502.
Glad you got it worked out though.