Migration Assistant - People's experiences

[MamaMoose]

I am about to migrate from my MacBook Pro to a Mac Pro. I plan to use Migration Assistant. Before doing so, I would like to know how successful TSers have been in using this process. Any glitches, caveats, or bewares? Will it, indeed transfer everything over to the new hardware? The Mac Pro came with OS 10.5.1 while the MBP has OS 10.5.2, After transfer, will the Mac Pro have 10.5.1  or a new 10.5.2?

Thanks for any help, thoughts, or ideas,

MamaMoose

[kimmer]

MM, I've used Migration Assistant most successfully twice now and haven't had a problem. Everything has come over. I guess my only gripe (if you can call it that) is that I didn't really want everything and had to dump some docs and pictures from the laptop.

QUOTE

After transfer, will the Mac Pro have 10.5.1 or a new 10.5.2?

Sorry, can't answer this as I never used it to transfer the entire system.

[Mayo]

I have used it more than a few times on a variety of Macs. I've never had a lick of trouble and it transfers 99+%.  I have a bunch of third-party apps, haxies, etc. and just about everything makes it over... The last time I used MA on one of my Macs around a half dozen apps/settings didn't make it so I had to spend all of 30 minutes to get things set-up. That sure beats the hours I used to spend configuring a new Mac! I recently used it for a client moving everything from a G5 iMac to an Intel iMac. Everything made it over and she was up and running immediately. It made the transition from 10.4 to 10.5 a breeze because her new Mac looked and operated pretty much just like her old Mac.

I have read that Apple Pro apps like Aperture and Final Cut Pro don't always work right after using MA, which seems rather odd to me since we're talking about Apple applications... To be on the safe side it might be best to reinstall those apps and then transfer the associated data from the old Mac. But I think that such problems are probably isolated so personally I wouldn't worry about it.

IMO Migration Assistant is one of the best things about OS X. I pity those Poor Souls still using OS 9 who have to deal with migrating to a new Mac!

[pendragon]

Mama,

My experiences are similar to those above with the only exception that a few serial/registration numbers from third party shareware did not make the migration and thus needed to be reentered. Other than that, I found it flawless.

[krissel]

I've used it successfully with the only trouble being some permissions on folders/volumes due to the install on one machine being done by the previous owner rather by me. It took a while to iron things out but all is fine now. You shouldn't have that problem.

As to upgrading the OS, no I don't think it will do that. I believe it will only transfer data, accounts and settings. In fact there is a possibility that you may run into some difficulty trying to move data from a newer machine to an older one. Not sure one decimal in OS will really be all that different. If you do run into a block, upgrade the Mac Pro to 10.5.2 first.

This reading refers to 10.4 Migration Assistant but I couldn't find much on the Leopard version other than for the MacBook Air.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1554

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1196

[krissel]

There is a newer version of the Assistant in the Leopard updates so you may want to do that first.

More:

http://macs.about.com/od/leopard105/ss/migratevol.htm

Note the comment here about two drives on a Pro that had the same name:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?sto...070807115154337