[Macworld]

Post your comments for Migration Assistant + Thunderbolt/FireWire Adapter = huh!? here

[redgeminipa]

"Or course you could forego the adapter altogether as Migration Assistant works over Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections as well."

Since doing a large transfer like this over WiFi is painfully slow, what your saying is, he bought the WRONG adapter for his MacBook Air. The new MacBook Air doesn't have an ethernet port.

[Chris Breen]

 redgeminipa, on 28 November 2012 - 06:15 AM, said:

"Or course you could forego the adapter altogether as Migration Assistant works over Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections as well."

Since doing a large transfer like this over WiFi is painfully slow, what your saying is, he bought the WRONG adapter for his MacBook Air. The new MacBook Air doesn't have an ethernet port.

Fixed the Ethernet bit.

And no, I'm not saying he bought the wrong adapter. As explained in the article, the adapter works perfectly well provided that you correctly configure Migration Assistant.

[ibrewster]

Which, of course, is the way migration assistant has ALWAYS worked over firewire...

[MichelleEris]

Will migration, using setup assistant, work with USB 3 from a hard drive?

[FernandoJofreAlfonso]

Quote

"Or course you could forego the adapter altogether as Migration Assistant works over Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections as well." Since doing a large transfer like this over WiFi is painfully slow, what your saying is, he bought the WRONG adapter for his MacBook Air. The new MacBook Air doesn't have an ethernet port.

Sadly, I did this once… it took me 29 hours (yes, 1 day + 4 hours). And of course, I couldn't use both macs in that time

[whitedog]

Thanks, Chris, for this information. I also found that Migration Assistant on a currently new iMac (one that still has FireWire) didn't work as expected. I had to take the hard drive out of an old G4 tower that had died; I cloned the old ATA drive using a Universal Drive Adaptor to a newer SATA drive with FireWire ports and tried to migrate the data to the new iMac. I couldn't get Migration Assistant to recognize the drive under any setting. I tried a direct FireWire connection and WiFi with the drive connected to another computer on my network. I had reformatted the SATA drive to the Apple Partition Map so that it would mirror the format of the old ATA drive. Connecting the drive via FireWire to an old G4 that still has Tiger on it, I repaired the old system using Disk Utility and DiskWarrior. But the Apple Partition Map may have been what threw off Migration Assistant, though I didn't have time or the energy to redo the whole clone to a GUID partition to test the proposition. I ended up migrating the data manually, which may have been a better solution anyway, because it used an entirely new user account rather than potentially transferring corrupted files from the old user account on a much older version of OS X - OS X 10.4.11 Tiger to be precise. Of course I had to be careful to replace the default iTunes Music folder and iPhoto Library on the iMac with the ones from the old computer. These took a while to update when I launched iTunes and iPhoto, but they did the job without any hiccups - to my immense relief. In my experience such updates do not always go smoothly.

I would be interested to find out if the different drive formats was in fact the cause of the Migration Assistant failure - if anyone knows the answer. It could same me some trouble in the future. Old Macs do die sooner or later and this may not be the last time I have to do such an upgrade. Thanks.

[lichinho]

Like ibrewster wrote: what you seem to be describing as a "workaround" method is quite simply the right way to do it. Put the "guest" mac in target mode and migrate away. Or, better still, if you have a clone of that mac drive in an external, use that.
Why would anyone want to do it over wifi or even ethernet is beyond me.

[anotherfahlman]

The From a Mac or PC option clearly states "Transfer information from a computer on the same network, or from a Mac connected using an Ethernet cable."

[NorthernSpy]

When my friend tried to migrate her data, via Ethernet, from her old MacBook Pro to her new 27" iMac, the process would run for hours, but never finish. This article seemed to provide a solution. As a test, I did a Target Disk Mode transfer, with everything unchecked except Downloads. It worked beautifully.

I then deleted the account that had been created and did it again, this time migrating everything. It ran overnight, but in the morning had failed to finish, just like the first attempts.

Any ideas where the snag is?

[snowdeo720]

So I have to agree with some of what has been said here, the most reliable and fastest method for Data Migration is with the old machine in target disk mode and connected via FireWire through the thunderbolt to FW adapter to the new machine.

[snowdeo720]

@WhiteDog the reason you're having issues is because out right OSX 10.4 is incompatible with Migration assistant in 10.7 and forward, the only option for older systems is Target Disk mode and then a manual drag and drop transfer of home folder contents and other user content!

@NortherSpy for your friend just have her go and buy the thunderbolt to firewire adapter and a firewire cable for the laptop from her local apple store, do the transfer and return both the cable and adapter within 14 days of purchase!!!!