You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Migrating via Time Machine from an old intel running High Sierra to a Mac Studio running Sonoma

Hi all migrating all data from the most recent backup of my 27 inch intel (1 TB] which ran High Sierra to a Mac Studio [1 TB) via a Time Machine backup. The Mac Studio is cable linked to the Time Machine external drive. Started this yesterday, now 12 hours later the next day, the Studio display is stuck on a blurry wallpaper image with the mouse recognized. Is this normal? Does it take this long or even longer or should I stop migration and start over?

I don’t want to mess up the Mac

iMac 27″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Apr 19, 2024 4:35 AM

Reply

Similar questions

4 replies

Apr 19, 2024 4:45 AM in response to Robin Lee

Is that external drive in a USB 2.0 case or a USB 3.0 one?


A mechanical hard drive in a USB 3.0 case is limited by its own speed - which would top out at maybe 100 – 150 MB per second, say 10 seconds per GB, or 10,000 seconds (2.8 hours) per TB. USB 2.0 has a nominal transfer speed of 60 MB per second, but 30 – 40 MB per second is more common, so then you'd be talking 8+ hours per TB.


There's probably a bit of extra overhead involved in going through lots of individual files on a Time Machine backup, so if you're migrating from a nearly-full 1 TB USB 2.0 drive, I'd give it a while longer.

Apr 19, 2024 4:49 AM in response to Robin Lee

As for the blurry background, I remember seeing something similar when I upgraded my. old iMac – possibly when I upgraded it to High Sierra.


Somewhere along the line there was a change, and macOS started to blur the desktop photo when you were logged out. You should get a login prompt at some point – but seeing a blurry image when you're logged out might just be normal, not a sign that the installation is dead.

Apr 19, 2024 8:15 AM in response to Robin Lee

Although the BEST Rotating magnetic drives can source a single initial Burst of data off the drive at near SATA-3 speeds, most can not maintain that data rate.


The limiting factor is the speed at which the platters spin the data under the read heads on the drive. Then the drive goes completely quiet for a (comparatively) long time while the head is moved to a new track.


Steady-state transfer rates for large files tend to be lower than 50 M Bytes/sec rather than 150 or higher.

Migrating via Time Machine from an old intel running High Sierra to a Mac Studio running Sonoma

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.