Migrated to new MacBook Air, lost all desktop files

juniper

juniper

Always curious.
Requiescat In Pace
Registered
Joined
Mar 1, 2010
Messages
4,129
Reaction score
675
Location
Forever on the island
:Shrug:

I bought a new MacBook Air and followed Apple's instructions about migrating info from old MacBook Pro, using the latest Time Machine Backup.

Seemed to go fine - yesterday, at one point, the Air desktop matched the Pro desktop, with photos and folders in the same places.

Now, Air desktop is empty.

I'm leaving early tomorrow morning for a trip and need to get this straightened out. Photos on are the new Air but I can't tell if all documents are. And that's what I need.

Help! Please!
 
juniper

juniper

Always curious.
Requiescat In Pace
Registered
Joined
Mar 1, 2010
Messages
4,129
Reaction score
675
Location
Forever on the island
Can't find my folders of WIP novel etc. All my folders of household info (insurance info, household inventory) etc are missing.

Have learned that I should never have kept those on desktop anyway. Rats. Too late.

Found that desktop photos etc are now in iCloud Drive archive and I was able to put those back on the desktop.

But I need all my old documents and can't find them.
 
juniper

juniper

Always curious.
Requiescat In Pace
Registered
Joined
Mar 1, 2010
Messages
4,129
Reaction score
675
Location
Forever on the island
Think I've figured it out. They're all in iCloud Drive now, but not in any particular order. That's ok. As long as they're on the Air, then I can move them around later. Off to bed. Early flight.
 

MisterV

Banned
Joined
Dec 29, 2016
Messages
124
Reaction score
9
I'm surprised they wound up in iCloud. If they were on your other hard drive, when you migrated, they should have transferred to the same spot on the new hard drive. Then, probably, you would have signed into your iCloud account to finish the process.

For my case, I keep the files I absolutely cannot lose in iCloud. But, due to the nature of data breaches, I do not keep sensitive info there. That info I keep on a backup drive.

I also regularly make copies of my writing from iCloud and copy it to the hard drive. This way I have two working copies on all times, in case my computer crashes, or if Apple's server dies or get bombed or something.
 
Introversion

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,727
Reaction score
15,139
Location
Massachusetts
juniper said:
I bought a new MacBook Air and followed Apple's instructions about migrating info from old MacBook Pro, using the latest Time Machine Backup.

Seemed to go fine - yesterday, at one point, the Air desktop matched the Pro desktop, with photos and folders in the same places.
Click to expand...

Dumb question: It sounds as though you still have the old MacBook Pro? If so, then you haven't really lost anything, yes? It's just that the Air doesn't yet have everything?

How did you migrate things? Did you boot the Air from the Time Machine backup in "recovery mode"? Or did the Air upon first boot up ask you if you wanted to connect to another machine and migrate? If the latter, you could always try the former: See articles like this one about restoring from Time Machine backups.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.