firewire or ethernet

[thewall]

I have just purchased a refurb 27" iMac 2011 it will be replacing my 21" 2009 iMac,i have photos and music on the 21" which i want on the 27",what is the best way firewire or ethernet,i have an ethernet cable but have been reading about firewire and there are so many different ones,which do i need is it 6pin or 9 pin,i did see in system profiler on the 21" that the firewire speed is up to 800 so what do i look for.

 

[RRutter]

You would get faster transfer rates with Firewire as opposed to that of an Ethernet cable.

 

[thewall]

thanks for that ,so when i go into the shop what do i look for,can a 4 or 6 pin fit in a 9 pin slot,how do i find out what pin i have in the macs

 

[rkaufmann87]

thanks for that ,so when i go into the shop what do i look for,can a 4 or 6 pin fit in a 9 pin slot,how do i find out what pin i have in the macs

Your iMac has a FW800 connection. You will want a Firewire 800 cable assuming the drive has FW800, first you have to determine if the drive is FW400 or FW800. That should be stated on the drives specifications. If it's FW400 you will need a cable like:

http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-F0...235&sr=8-1&keywords=firewire+400+to+800+cable

If it's FW800 you will need a cable like:

http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-F0...1350066270&sr=1-2&keywords=firewire+800+cable

 

[talmy]

Since this is a one time operation and you already have Ethernet, I expect any time you would save transferring via Firewire would be far less the time lost investigating and buying the cable!

I just connect both systems to the network, start migration assistant, and go away and do something else for a few hours. It's all done, and it only takes a couple of minutes of my time.