So my wife had to reset her macbook pro, so she backed it all up to an external drive. But after they reset it, the migration assistant is only showing a little circle thing and not recognizing the drive. The drive is in the desktop though and I can look through it. The "genius" who helped her at the store said all of her settings and programs would go back to how it was, but its not working. She has a lot of work to do through illustrator/photoshop for work, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

to be back up as quickly as possible, just boot from the external drive. the computer will behave as if nothing's changed. good luck!