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krx · Sep 6, 2005, 12:41 AM

Just used migration assistant on my new iBook and wish I hadn't. It copied the whole "Applications (Mac OS 9)" folder onto the new hard drive, thus duplicating the version of this folder that was already there (they appear identical). It also gave me 2 (empty) Desktop Folders (are these supposed to be empty?), 2 Microsoft folders (both with Help as the only folder inside) and a total of 3 system folders - 2 from the old Mac (one is OSX and one is OS9).

People seem to have pretty good luck w/this ap so I'm sure I must have done something wrong (tho it seemed pretty straightforward...). Now I'm wondering, can I undo the transfer done w/migration assistant or do I need to do a clean install and start over?

Big Mac · Sep 6, 2005, 07:05 AM

You cannot undo the process, but why not just delete the redundant folders/files? The Migration Assistant will transfer what you allow it to transfer. It's supposed to be used on a new or cleanly installed Mac, so if you're using it on a Mac that already has said files, you're going to get duplicates.

krx · Sep 6, 2005, 10:47 AM

That's just it - it was a brand new iBook. Migration Assistant was the first thing I did. Also, I thought MA was supposed to NOT duplicate items but just move things that weren't already there. Perhaps I misunderstood that...

In any case, I am hesitant to just start chucking folders, especially system folders, when I don't understand what happened or why they are there. Is there a more thorough way to proceed, to see what should be gotten rid of?

Big Mac · Sep 6, 2005, 11:48 AM

Maybe you just want to start over with a hard drive reformat and reinstall of the OS, followed by another Migration assistant attempt. If it was a clean machine then the assistant screwed up somehow, which is strange.

Big Mac · 04:21 PM

Well, ironically enough Migration Assistant just failed me on my new mini, which was purchased as a backup for my G5! It seemed to transfer everything correctly, except for the fact that the last two months of data is missing. I'm back in late July! I'm going to have to Reformat and start fresh; if Migration Assistant screws up again I'm going to be really disgruntled. I think it may have gotten confused, taking the data from my G5's backup drive that I probably cloned around two months ago.

edit: I am nearly certain that Migration Assistant inadvertently copied the contents from the source machine's backup drive rather than the regular startup drive, despite the fact I explicitly unchecked the backup drive as a source for transfer. Warning for the future: If you have more than one drive (or perhaps one drive with more than one partition) on a source system, Migration Assistant will likely confuse the source of the transfer. Anyway, I knew I'd have to erase and install, but I was not sure how to proceed after that. I finally decided to give Migration Assistant another shot, but this time instead of doing it from within Setup Assistant, I chose to finish the first Assistant, then boot the G5 into TDM at the desktop. The reason why I chose to do this was so that I could unmount (by dragging to the trash) the other volumes on my G5, in order to prevent Migration from screwing the pooch again. I then launched Migration Assistant from /Utilities and went through the lengthy process. Thankfully, this time everything looks to be up to date, kosher - in place, ostensibly.

edit 2: Okay, I just found out that my iTunes Library and some of my newer albums are missing from the mini. It looks like I'm going to have to start over a second time. I no longer trust Migration Assistant.

krx · Sep 24, 2005, 01:39 PM

Yeah, I found the MigAss to be a fairly blunt instrument. It could be a sweet tool but it seems to me they need to refine it for more customized transfers. It just doesn't work if you have to second guess it.

Person Man · Sep 25, 2005, 11:36 AM

Originally Posted by krx

Yeah, I found the MigAss to be a fairly blunt instrument. It could be a sweet tool but it seems to me they need to refine it for more customized transfers. It just doesn't work if you have to second guess it.

Not to mention that if you have any applications that require kernel extensions, those will no longer work right until they're reinstalled. Most people wouldn't understand why their app is no longer functioning correctly (or even know how to fix the error messages they get).