How to Fix Mac Migration Assistant Stuck or Frozen

For users who need to move from an old Mac to a new Mac, the best choice is to migrate over a wifi connection or wired connection using Migration Assistant. Unfortunately, not all users can complete the transfer job successfully.

User story - Apple Migration Assistant stuck at one minute

"I just purchased an iMac and was trying to migrate from my early 2011 MacBook Pro to the new machine, using Migration Assistant over wifi. But the migration has been stuck at 'Less than a minute remaining' since 8:00 PM yesterday. And until now, it has been in progress for about 15 hours. Is there any fix?"

Different Migration Assistant stuck scenarios

Just like the above case, there are always some users report that Migration Assistant stuck while starting up, at the end or midway with different messages saying 20+ hours remaining, less than a minute remaining, looking for source, looking for applications and documents to transfer, preparing transfer user documents or looking for other computers.

Simple steps to fix Migration Assistant stuck and frozen 

If you have happened to encounter a similar situation where Migration Assistant stuck and stopped working, here are some troubleshooting steps that you can try to get rid of this issue.

1. Try to use Target Disk Mode on the old Mac.

2. Unplug the ethernet cable from both machines and re-inserted it. Some users said the operation made the migration process resumed, re-synced, and finally completed.

3. Try to migrate everything except Applications, and then manually reinstall those you want on the new Mac.

4. Run a hardware diagnostics to check if there is a hardware issue on your Mac computer.

5. Try to migrate from a time machine backup if you have an available one.

Try reliable Migration Assistant alternative to fix stuck issue

Sometimes, you might fail to fix Migration Assistant stuck issue even after trying every possible solution. At this moment, we recommend you try EaseUS Mac backup software to manage the migration job from one Mac to another by disk cloning. It's an easy and practical approach to deal with Migration Assistant stuck problem. 

1. Connect the new Mac to the old machine and launch EaseUS Mac cloning software. 

2. In the From drop-down list, select the old Mac disk that you want to clone.

3. In the To drop-down list, select the new Mac hard drive as the destination disk where you want to save the duplicate.

4. Set up the disk cloning properties. Here, you are allowed to exclude files or folders if necessary. 

5. Finally, click the Start button to execute the cloning operation.