Migration Assistant and lost files

I just, by either dumb error or providence, migrated the contents of my backed up hard drive, which has my Mt Lion and all applications folders, to a new hard drive. The old and original drive on my 2008 Quad Mac Pro was starting to worry me. All of the applications and systems files appeared to have migrated flawlessly, and my calendar updated and my 20,000+ emails were restored. All of the programs/applications work. Everything appears normal, except data and obvious missing files. (Note I had installed Mt. Lion over Leopard and Snow Leopard previously, and did not rewrite the drive before I did that.)

The size of this new drive is substantially less than the last one. On the latter, I counted more than 50 gigs of data, on the volume with all of the primary OSX documents. That is what I see in the Time Machine backup right before I did the Migration Assistant. The size of the same volume on the restored new hard drive that has my OSX is about 31 gigs.

I did NOT run (by accident and perhaps curiosity) the Time Machine restore backup using disk utilities. Again I did, by accident or curiosity) Migration Assistant.

What does appear lost are all of the Windows documents that were accessible on my portioned drive on my old hard drive, accessible only via VMWare. (I had all of those previously backed up, brute force, before doing this, and I'm not worried if I don't access them now since I have them if I need them).

Does anyone else have experience with using Migration Assistant and losing files that may have been on a partitioned drive (running Windows) and accessible by VMWare? I can still rewrite over the new drive and do it all over again using disk utilities and running this from a boot jump drive I created before, but this time using Restore/Time Machine. I just had heard from one source it was best to download Mountain Lion first, and then do a Time Machine restore, which I ended up actually not doing.

OK, that post was a little confusing to me. Let me see if I can summarize what I think you are saying. On a 2008 Mac Pro (not a laptop), you replaced your hard drive, then restored from that drive to the new one using MA. Everything moved and works, except for some VMWare files that were on a separate partition. You are worried about something being missing because the original drive had 50 GB of stuff and on the new one there are only 31 GB now.

What does this mean:

Everything appears normal, except data and obvious missing files.

Click to expand...

Either everything is normal, or data is missing. Which is it?

From what I can make of your post, it would appear that on the original drive you had at least two partitions, one for OSX and another for Windows that you accessed through VMWare. If that is correct, then what you have restored is just the OSX partition. The windows partition will have to be recreated and restored separately using whatever backup software you have on Windows. TM does not back up Windows partitions, so the windows data won't be there. MA won't migrate it either, as it is designed for OSX.

Now, if what you really meant to say was that you had a virtual machine in VMWare that when booted looked like separate drives, then the files for the virtual machines may or may not be backed up by TM. MA should have moved those image files over as just another file, but I don't use VMWare myself, so I don't know if VMWare is smart enough to realize that your restored those files and to boot them.

Part of the difference in the space consumed on the two drives can also be logs, cache files and other "temporary" things that the system created and that were zeroed out when you reinstalled the OS, before the restore.

Yes, I meant to say I did have a virtual machine. All of the applications, inclusive of all of my mail and calendar data/contacts did make the migration, so that is "normal." The partitioned disk data did not. I was never sure, even after consulting with VMWare help desk contacts, what would happen with transferring/migrating/restoring data that is on the old partitioned disk. Thanks for explaining how logs/cache files could create data that was "zeroed out" during the reinstall. I was not aware of that. Sometimes one just has to part with the old data and trying to run two systems. Anyone reading this should certainly back up their virtual machines separately, I think, and not rely on Time Machine. But I still can't conclusively say. Thanks.

A virtual machine is, in reality, a file with all the information that VMWare needs to create the illusion that you have a Windows PC inside your Mac. In that file is data about the memory, virtual hard drive, operating system, data files, etc, etc, etc, that VMWare uses to do the magic. Normally the data is NOT on a separate partition, it's just a file that is managed by OSX just as any other file is managed, but which VMWare opens to make it look like a PC. So, because it is just a file, when TM runs it CAN and WILL back it up just like any other file, as long as you have not told TM to exclude it. Some folks do exclude the VMs because they are HUGE. Not only do they contain data about the simulated hardware, they contain all of YOUR data as well, so even with compression, the files are large. Every time you run VMWare and start the VM, the file changes, so TM makes another backup copy. Frequent runs of VMWare with TM backing up the file can eat through a ton of disk space, so a lot of folks tell TM to ignore the VM files and do a manual backup or just copy the big file to a different drive manually.

You referred to "partitioned disk data" in your last post. Did you have an actual separate partition on the old HD, or are you talking about the virtual disk that VMWare generates out of the virtual machine file? If it is a truly separate partition, you will have to create that separate partition on the new drive (if you haven't already done that) and then copy from the old drive to the new IN that partition. If you do that repartitioning of the new drive, you'll probably have to do the migration to the OSX partition as well, so make a good backup before you do anything.

I use Parallels, but it works the same way. I do a backup before and after I invoke Parallels. The Before is to make sure I have a good backup in case something goes wrong. The After is to capture any changes I made during the virtual session. If you think on that for a minute, each time the Before becomes a copy of the After from the previous session, but I'm ok with that. They reside on an external drive that has a ton of space.

Thanks for the reply. To answer your question, no I didn't create a separate partition with utilities. I did create just the virtual machine, when I first used VMWare. (Sorry for the confusion.) This helps. So I still can write over this hard drive if I want using Restore and, according to this, that should restore all of the files I accessed on my virtual machine. Thanks for explaining how TM works with VM. Great to know this.

So I still can write over this hard drive if I want using Restore and, according to this, that should restore all of the files I accessed on my virtual machine.

Click to expand...

To be clear, if MA worked properly, you should be able to open VMWare and boot the windows virtual machine and all your files should be there. I'd test that before I did anything else. That sentence had a couple of "this" and "that" references that left me scratching my head a bit. If "this" drive is the new one, then MA should have put the VM files right where they were on the old drive. So when you start VMWare, all of the windows files that were "on" the virtual machine should still be there. (In reality, they are actually embedded inside the VM files I talked about in the previous post.)

Bottom line, start VMWare and see if the virtual machine will boot and that everything is there.

In my case, VMWare didn't open after I completed Migration Assistant. I will further explore. It could be I have to upgrade VMWare now. Thanks much for your overview how this should have worked, ideally. "This" is your help, in both instances.