Migrating from 10.6 Time Machine Backup

I just bought a MacBook Pro yesterday and I'm trying to get all the data from my old iMac onto the new machine using a Time Machine backup.

My old machine was running 10.6 and the new machine is running 10.7.

I went through the whole Migration Assistant process using my external drive and thought everything went fine.

Unfortunately I can only see the applications that came over and none of my other files. And the applications don't open with my information it's as if I'm opening them for the first time.

It looks like all of the data transferred though because it used up 110GB on my HDD.

I'm not sure what to do next. I could use some help figuring this out. Thanks!

I usually do not recommend using the Migration Assistant when transferring data from an older Mac to a newer one. The best way to do the transfer is with Time Machine. It transfers everything over with the least amount of fuss.

What you could do since the MBP is new and running Lion, is to boot into the Recovery Partition, erase the drive, and reinstall Lion. Then, make a full Time Machine backup of your iMac to the external drive. Boot the MBP into the Recovery Partition again, attach the external hard drive, and then select Time Machine. That will copy everything over from the iMac.

chscag, thanks for the info. I didn't think of that.

So, just before I read your post, I found all the info on my MBP. Because my user profiles were under the same name it made me change the name of the profile it was brining over. I had to restart my computer and log into the other user profile to access everything.

Now I have two user profiles. One with the data from my Time Machine backup and one new profile that I created when I set up Lion for the first time. Is there a way to merge the two? Or should I erase the drive and start from scratch per your instructions above? Would that take care of the duplicate user profile?

No, don't do that now. Just copy everything from one profile to the profile that you wish to keep. Make sure that everything has been copied and all your Apps, settings, documents, data, etc. are available without any permissions problems. Naturally, if something is going to be duplicated by the copy, leave it be. Once you determine that everything is OK, log on to the good profile (the one to keep) and remove the duplicate profile that you no longer need.

If something should go wrong, you can always go back to the iMac, make a full TM backup and then do as I suggested in my first reply. Let us know how it goes.