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malch

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 20, 2008
466
9
Hi there,
I'm wondering about the fastest way to share files (some of them large video files) between two Macs. One is a Mac Pro, the other a MacBook Pro.
Any advice would be appreciated.
malch
 
The fastest interface currently shipping on Apple laptops is gigabit ethernet.

If you don't have a gigabit switch, just connect a patch cord between the two computers. They will get autoconfigured IPs and should see each other. Make sure File Sharing is enabled, and connect. You're all set.
 
Im trying to do this between an iMac and a Windows laptop yet nothing is happening. They are connected together via the ethernet cable and sharing is enabled and the firewall is turned off on the iMac
 
@Themacnub

I suspect you need to manually assign IP addresses. Try this:

Mac: set ethernet IP 192.168.10.1, netmask 255.255.255.0
PC: 192.168.10.2 same netmask
Dont worry about DNS or gateway, leave blank
Be sure you have SMB file sharing turned on for the mac (Options under file sharing)
You may need to turn off the wireless adapter on the PC laptop in order to see the mac on the new network.

If the PC laptop is not gigabit you need to use a crossover cable or go through a switch.
 
if your mac pro has an esata pci card and you have a mac book pro with an express slot that is also fast over 100MB/s


if your macbookpro has the slot you should buy this


http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/EXP34SATA2F1/


it can read at 170MB/s and write at 120MB/s make sure your macbook has the slot to put it in. with this adapter you can add esata drives to your macbook pro like this one

http://eshop.macsales.com/owcpages/guardianmax_mini.html or this one

http://www.sansdigital.com/towerstor/ts2ct.html both are bootable
 
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Im trying to do this between an iMac and a Windows laptop yet nothing is happening. They are connected together via the ethernet cable and sharing is enabled and the firewall is turned off on the iMac

Just to be clear, you cannot share between 2 computers by connecting them with a normal ethernet cord. You need either a router between them, or if you have one you can use an ethernet crossover cable.
 
Just to be clear, you cannot share between 2 computers by connecting them with a normal ethernet cord. You need either a router between them, or if you have one you can use an ethernet crossover cable.

Are you sure? Even the iBook I had could manually connect to a Windows computer via a normal patch cable, as the Ethernet port on that iBook manually switched the signals.
 
Just to be clear, you cannot share between 2 computers by connecting them with a normal ethernet cord. You need either a router between them, or if you have one you can use an ethernet crossover cable.

Oh yes you can. No need for a crossed cable. Modern NIC's (which includes all Mac's since the past decade or so) have auto switching, which makes a crossover cable obsolete.

@philipma1957

eSATA can't be used to connect two computers. It doesn't have a network protocol like Ethernet or FireWire. And the speed will be limited to the hard drives speed anyway (at least if the user doesn't have an SSD in the MBP and a RAID or SSD in the desktop).
 
Are you sure? Even the iBook I had could manually connect to a Windows computer via a normal patch cable, as the Ethernet port on that iBook manually switched the signals.

LOL Oops, sorry guys, I googled it and it looks like you are right. This is awesome and after a year of Mac ownership I never new that.
 
Thanks for the correction Transporteur. I was uncertain if auto-crossover would work with a 100Mb connection. Evidently as long as 1 host supports it a cross-over cable is not needed.
 
Ya in OS X you don't need to do a thing. Just plug in a Ethernet cable and they will link up. In most cases, even if they are also connected over say a WiFi network, OS X seems smart enough to send file transfers over the gigabit network link, but you sometimes need to double check what link it is using.

In Windows 7 bootcamp with the same machines, you also can just plug in an Ethernet cable but you need to add some manual networking settings. I just used the same settings that OS X assigned automatically.

I keep a spare cable around and just plug my Macbook Pro up to my Mac Pro via Ethernet if I am going to be doing some huge file transfers otherwise I just do it over the WiFi network that I use for everything else.
 
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How about firewire target disk mode? It is way faster than 100mb ethernet. Downsides are you have to shutdown the MBP to do it and you need a firewire cable. Otherwise its perfect for transferring files, it is one of my favorite features of Apple computers.
 
How about firewire target disk mode? It is way faster than 100mb ethernet. Downsides are you have to shutdown the MBP to do it and you need a firewire cable. Otherwise its perfect for transferring files, it is one of my favorite features of Apple computers.

The Mac Pro (and its predecessor, the G4 and G5 Power Mac) has a Gigabit Ethernet port (or two), the MacBook Pro (and its predecessor, the G4 PowerBook, except the 12" one) has a Gigabit Ethernet port too, thus Target Disk Mode is not required and one could get up to 10MB/s more than with Firewire 800.
 
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