Five tries to get Migration Assistant to work from late-2009 iMac
It took five tries, with five different set-ups, for me to successfully use Migration Assistant to transfer my data from my late-2009 iMac, running High Sierra 10.13.6, to my new M2 Mac Mini, running Ventura 13.2. I don't really have a question; I’m posting this for posterity, for anyone else struggling with a similar migration.
TLDR: to transfer about 1TB, I had to use target disk mode on the iMac, with a Firewire to Thunderbolt connection, and the entire transfer took about 12 hours.
The iMac has a 2TB drive of which I’ve used about 1.5TB. I’m not transferring Applications, and my user directory has 925GB in it. I have an Ethernet network in my house, in which devices are connected to a Netgear Gigabit Ethernet switch, including a Synology DS418play network drive that I use for Time Machine backups.
I get my computer from the Apple Store the evening of Day 1, plug it in, and begin the first attempt to transfer data.
First attempt: both computers connected to Ethernet switch, run Migration Assistant on both computers. The initial connection is quick. I let it calculate all the sizes of the potential volumes to transfer, which takes an hour or so, select which I want to transfer, and start. But it hangs, I don’t recall exactly where—either at 1 file transferred, or preparing. After a few hours, I cancel.
Second attempt: Ethernet cable directly between the two computers, not using the switch. Migration Assistant starts up fine. The “preparing files” step takes a couple of hours, but the file transfer begins and I let it run overnight. By early morning on Day 2, it has reached about 500,000 files transferred and projects about 100 hours left. Later in the morning, still around 500,000 files transferred, projected time creeping up. Early afternoon, files transferred hasn’t budged. I’m away from the computer for a while, but in the late afternoon it has jumped to around 600,000 files transferred, but isn’t moving, and still projects about 100 hours left. I cancel.
Third attempt, evening of Day 2: Use Time Machine backup on network drive by connecting Mac Mini to network. This never gets off the ground. First, the backup is busy; I have to cancel automatic backups on the iMac and restart the network drive. Migration Assistant can then connect to the network drive, but the connection drops after about a minute and it puts me back to the migration source selection. I try about a dozen times, then give up.
Fourth attempt: Bring network drive over to computer and connect Mac Mini to network drive directly with an Ethernet cable. Migration Assistant finds the backup and the migration can begin without any of the instability of trying to do this through the network. The “preparing to transfer user documents” takes several hours, but the actual transfer of documents begins, and I let it run overnight. By morning, it’s at about 500,000, and increasing, projecting about 14 hours left. By mid-morning, it reaches 667,330 files transferred, but stops. I wait an hour, then a few hours. No further files have transferred, and the projected time isn’t changing either. Finally, in mid-afternoon, after it’s been stuck for 5 hours, I cancel.
Fifth, and successful, attempt: I had to go to work to get (1) a Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter; (2) a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter; and (3) a Firewire 800 cable. Using these components, connected the Firewire 800 port on the iMac to one of the Thunderbolt ports on the Mac Mini, and rebooted the iMac in target disk mode. Migration Assistant recognized the disk. It took about a half hour with “preparing user documents”, then “reading system receipts”, then “looking for applications and documents to transfer”. It took about a half hour to count up to 2,823,556 items. The actual file transfer started about an hour after I started this process. After 10 minutes or so, it had transferred around 35,000 files and was projecting 106 hours left, and after an hour and a half, it had reached about 450,000 files and was projecting 15 hours left. The files transferred kept climbing, although slowly, but after 4 hours or so of the transfer the rate was relatively steady between 40-45 MB/s. In the middle of the night, 9 hours after the whole thing began, it was up to 1,670,932 files and projecting another 3 hours left. Then finally I when I went to the computer on Day 3, 12 hours after starting the fifth migration, it had finished and I was able to complete the migration process.
So altogether, I’d conclude: target disk mode is best, direct connections work better than through a network.
2 years ago
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