Migrate OS X using Migration Assistant and Time Machine - not enough space

I desparately need to migrate from Mac OS X 10.5.8 running on a rather old Mac Pro to 10.10 running on a new Mac Mini. To achieve this, I was planning on using the Migration Assistant (MA) tool with a Time Machine (TM) backup stored on a USB drive. However, MA keeps telling me that there is not enough space to complete the migration, even though the TM backup is ~24 GB, and the Mac Mini comes with a 500 GB HD.

I have checked here:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/11412283#24471966

but none of the advice given there help me. I have also checked the disk (multiple times) using diskutil.

Do you guys have any tips on how to resolve this? Are there any other ways in which I could perform the transition?

Thanks a LOT in advance!

EDIT: I have tried to connect the two machines via FireWire - same issue. In the dialog box where I can select what to migrate, I have tried unselecting user data, applications, etc. What's strange is that MA keeps telling me I have not enough space on the target drive even if I unselect everything except for, say, the settings.

Solution 1:

The same thing happened to me. I lost a Mac virtual machine, which was not backed up by time machine on the host system, but it WAS backed up by the guest OS X system itself. After creating a new guest OS X system and figuring out that Migration Assistant was the correct method of restoring from a Time Machine backup, I was blocked by the same issue. MA claimed that I needed more space to restore the data from the backup. My target system was a single drive system with 80GB of total space and 60GB free, while the backup was only around 30GB in size. Even when only a small amount of files were selected, MA refused to restore it.

The target system had Server.app installed, while the original system backed up did NOT have Server.app installed. So, I simply moved Server.app to the Trash, and tried MA again... this time it worked and had no issues.

Solution 2:

I have been having this problem when using Migration Assistant to move from a 10.6 install to a 10.11 install, and could get nowhere.

A reference in this discussion: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7523071?start=0&tstart=0 to Charles Edge's TakeControl of OSX Server book seemed to indicate that it might be a "Server.app" issue. For me, the old 10.6 system was not a "Mac OS X Server" machine, but the new 10.11 system did have the Server.app software installed and running.

https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/osx-server

When I removed "Server.app" from the /Applications folder, and gave my admin credentials, the system informed me that it would turn off all the Server services, but leave the data intact at /Library/Server. Now when I run Migration Assistant.app (after using sudo hdiutil attach /Path/To/Image.dmg to get the sparse disk image with the TimeMachine data to remain mounted after Migration Assistant.app logs me out as mentioned http://www.blueboxmoon.com/wordpress/?p=854 ), I am able to select various items without the claim that there is not enough room.

I just (2016/08/21) did the migration and it has successfully completed with no errors about being out of space.