macnn
02/07/2008, 5:05pm, EST
Thursday, February 7th
Part II: First Look: MacBook Air Migration Assistant
Transferring Accounts: Second Try
For a second attempt, I decided to transfer my existing user account from a PowerMac G5, running Tiger, to the Air. This time, installation of the Migration Assistant was truly successful, taking only 16 MB of disc space.
Installing the Migration Assistant program on the source computer.
Initiating the subsequent migration process was also straightforward: run the Migration Assistant on both computers, which requires administrative access, selecting the MacBook Air to as the destination computer and the other computer as the source computer. The Migration Assistant on the Air then generates a numerical password to enter on the source computer to authorize the transfer.
A password from the Air is required to authorize transfer from the source computer.
The password generated by the Migration Assistant on the Air.
Filed under: computers, Apple
Other story tags: MacBook Air, First Look, wireless, migration assistant
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If apple wanted the 'ultimate' in mobility, they wouldn't have included a USB port, monitor jack, or headphone port. And they would have made it smaller (say index card sized). And cut the weight a lot (say index card weight). Then you MIGHT achieve ultimate mobility.
Or you could change that first sentence to read "To achieve the best balance between mobility and features...."
so i tried it again. ran for about an hour... then hung at a 19 hour estimated time remaining. left it that way for another hour... no change.
tried it again. now i no longer had enough free space to run the full migration. apparently it was *saving* all the files in the failed migrations. not very cool. normally i would boot into FW disk mode and delete the file and try again. no such option with the Air. so i skipped running it again and created a new user and logged in.
from there i tried the Migration Assistant again. i tried a good 15-20 times to get it to run at this point. it would either not find the other machine or find it then hang at "Preparing" or the step after "Preparing" (looking for users or something like that). like hung hung... beach ball... had to force-quit out of it.
after doing that many many many times... eventually skipping wireless and trying on the ethernet network... no change. still lame. restarted both machines several times as well.
i finally got it to work by connecting the machines *directly* together via ethernet (no switch etc.) and running it that way.
that worked. gave some ridiculous estimates... 8 hours. 27 hours. 19 hours. 2 hours. etc etc. it was all finished in about 3 hours though.
so that was good. but half the applications were crapped out. converted to "Unix Executable Files" etc. icons missing. some other small problems. it got *most* everything though so this morning i manually recopied the applications that went bad (Adobe CS3 / Office 2004 and a couple others) and since their various other parts copied fine they all worked.
so now it is all fine. and working. i read the Ars Technica review this morning and they seemed to have a similar problem using Migration Assistant wirelessly. and anecdotally they suggest it hasn't worked for anyone.
so use a direct ethernet connection. a Time Machine backup on an external USB drive is actually probably the best bet as far as speed goes. so if you have that option... use it!