High Speed Data Transfer - How?

[Michael73]

Bought a Drobo 5D today as I'll need an external storage array for the existing media drives of various sizes (and a Time Machine solution / drive) in my Mac Pro 3,1 when I upgrade to the new Mac Pro coming out in December.

The Drobo 5D has 2 connection types - Thunderbolt and USB3. Can anyone recommend a solution to transfer literally Terabytes of data from my existing drives sitting in the MP to the Drobo?

I know USB3 is backwards compatible to the USB2 ports in my current machine but I'm guessing that transferring that amount of data will take ages. It would be great if I could make use of the Firewire or LAN connections.

Does anyone know of a TB to LAN, TB to FW or USB3 to FW connection? If not, does anyone have suggestions on how to transfer that amount of data quickly to the Drobo?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I'd just go with USB 2. Yes if you could hack a FW or USB solution it would be faster - but not hugely faster, like an order of magnitude - more like 2x-3x faster, you'd waste more time than that finding & ordering appropriate adapters and what-not. Just plug it in & get the copying started.

Edit: If you TRULY want a faster solution, get a Thunderbolt multi-drive bay, pull the drives from your Pro and put them in that, and plug it into the new Mac Pro - and do the copy from there. There is no really "Fast" solution that involves using your current Pro.

 

[apunkrockmonk]

Bought a Drobo 5D today as I'll need an external storage array for the existing media drives of various sizes (and a Time Machine solution / drive) in my Mac Pro 3,1 when I upgrade to the new Mac Pro coming out in December.

The Drobo 5D has 2 connection types - Thunderbolt and USB3. Can anyone recommend a solution to transfer literally Terabytes of data from my existing drives sitting in the MP to the Drobo?

I know USB3 is backwards compatible to the USB2 ports in my current machine but I'm guessing that transferring that amount of data will take ages. It would be great if I could make use of the Firewire or LAN connections.

Does anyone know of a TB to LAN, TB to FW or USB3 to FW connection? If not, does anyone have suggestions on how to transfer that amount of data quickly to the Drobo?

Using the hardware in your signature, this assumes that your MBP is a late 2011 and has Thunderbolt to attach it to your Drobo.

Enable File Sharing on whatever you'd like to move from the Mac Pro to the Drobo, ensure both the MBP and MP are plugged in to your Time Capsule with Ethernet and both are showing 1Gbps link speed, attach the Drobo to the MBP and begin copying.

This should net you around 800Mbps (100MBps) transfers assuming your hard drives can maintain that high of a transfer speed. I say 800Mbps because that's the effective transfer speed over Gigabit Ethernet in the real world.

Like the previous poster said, this will be 2x faster than USB2 at best.

 

[hfg]

Just plug it in to your USB 2 ports and let it run overnight. A few Terabytes isn't going to take forever, but it will take a day or so.

Looking for a faster interface isn't going to speed up your Mac Pro hard drive data rates a lot, unless you have them configured as a striped RAID-0. The data from single drives is relatively slow, and utilizing a faster interface isn't going to change that.

Sort of like riding your moped down the Autobahn ... you can only go as fast as the moped can go.

 

[Michael73]

Using the hardware in your signature, this assumes that your MBP is a late 2011 and has Thunderbolt to attach it to your Drobo.

Enable File Sharing on whatever you'd like to move from the Mac Pro to the Drobo, ensure both the MBP and MP are plugged in to your Time Capsule with Ethernet and both are showing 1Gbps link speed, attach the Drobo to the MBP and begin copying.

This should net you around 800Mbps (100MBps) transfers assuming your hard drives can maintain that high of a transfer speed. I say 800Mbps because that's the effective transfer speed over Gigabit Ethernet in the real world.

Like the previous poster said, this will be 2x faster than USB2 at best.

I think you may be on to something but you may have over complicated things by using the Time Capsule...

Indeed I do have an early 2011 MBP with a TB port. So here's the question...can't I just plug the Drobo into my MBP using TB and then using an Ethernet cable, wire my MP to my MBP? In that way the MBP just acts as a hub...

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I think you may be on to something but you may have over complicated things by using the Time Capsule...

Indeed I do have an early 2011 MBP with a TB port. So here's the question...can't I just plug the Drobo into my MBP using TB and then using an Ethernet cable, wire my MP to my MBP? In that way the MBP just acts as a hub...

Not without special cables and manual IP config. The TC handles all that for you with no significant performance hit.

 

[Michael73]

Not without special cables and manual IP config. The TC handles all that for you with no significant performance hit.

Well that sucks donkey balls

I wish I knew someone with a single 3.5" TB enclosure that could borrow for like an hour. I could take my drive out of the MP, put it into the enclosure, attach the enclosure to the back of the Drobo and do the transfer at warp speed.

 

[apunkrockmonk]

Not without special cables and manual IP config. The TC handles all that for you with no significant performance hit.

Most modern computers do not need crossover cables, if you attach two modern computers together with a patch cable the ports will auto-sense it and still negotiate a connection.

Due to Zero-Configuration Networking, no additional configuration should be necessary for the machines to share files. Internet would not be shared unless you turned that on in the Sharing Preference Pane.

Well that sucks donkey balls

I wish I knew someone with a single 3.5" TB enclosure that could borrow for like an hour. I could take my drive out of the MP, put it into the enclosure, attach the enclosure to the back of the Drobo and do the transfer at warp speed.

I recommended using the Time Capsule at first as I had never tried doing a file transfer without a router and was unsure how much configuration would be necessary.

After a little bit of research and trying it myself I can say no additional configuration is necessary.

I attached my MacBook Air to the second NIC in my Hackintosh, much like you'd attach your MacBook Pro to the second NIC in your Mac Pro.

The Hackintosh file shares are immediately visible on the MBA in the Finder with no configuration.

Even though you see both computers have self-assigned IP addresses they're both in the same subnet, 169.254.0.0/16. No gateway is necessary as this is just a computer to computer network with no expectation of being able to access any greater WAN.

 

[Giuly]

You could retrofit USB 3.0 on your Mac Pro with a CalDigit USB 3.0 PCIe card.

 

[Michael73]

You could retrofit USB 3.0 on your Mac Pro with a CalDigit USB 3.0 PCIe card.

Creative suggestion. However, I'm not willing to put any more money into a machine that will be replaced next month and just for a one time data transfer.

 

[Michael73]

After a little bit of research and trying it myself I can say no additional configuration is necessary.

Now that is what I'm talkin' about. I'll have time to see if I can get this working tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm assuming that when I attach the MacPro to the Macbook Pro via ethernet cable, I'll need to turn off the wireless connection of the MBP to make sure the connection happens via the wired connection. Correct?

 

[apunkrockmonk]

Now that is what I'm talkin' about. I'll have time to see if I can get this working tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm assuming that when I attach the MacPro to the Macbook Pro via ethernet cable, I'll need to turn off the wireless connection of the MBP to make sure the connection happens via the wired connection. Correct?

Just to make sure, yes that is what I would recommend.

Changing the service order (in Network Prefs, underneath the "gear menu") to choose Ethernet prior to choosing WiFi may allow you to remain connected to WiFi yet still have the Gigabit transfer speeds.

 

[giffut]

Get ...

... a PCI Express USB3 card - recommended brands are Orico and Inateck - it should work out of the box with your Mac Pro and OSX 10.8ff.

Now: The Drobo Beyond RAID technology will NOT give you fast throughput, but reliability and easy HD size upgrades. I see my Drobo S v2 (USB3/FW800/eSATA) delivering between 90MB/s to 35MB/s throughput. The thunderbolt port with your unit doesn't´necessarily make much of a difference.

I´d say get the USB3 card for around US$20,- and enjoy future fast speed external storage via USB3 on your Mac Pro.

PS

My Drobo is connected via a Inateck USB3 4 Port card on a Macbook Pro 2011 running OSX 10.9

 

[Michael73]

I should have circled back...

I finally got around to setting up the Drobo last Tuesday and for the most part things went pretty smoothly. Here are some notes…

I connected my MP to the MBP via an ethernet cable and plugged the Drobo via the provided TB cable into the MBP…essentially turning the MBP into a hub. Ultimately this worked out quite well but it took some time as I had to manually configure the two machines to recognize each other. For some odd reason, simply plugging the ethernet cable into both machines wasn't automatically recognized by either machine. I had to manually configure the IPs, subnet masks and restart both machines. But, once completed it all worked like a charm. I can't tell you for sure what the gigabit transfer speed was but when I copied over about 500GB it took about an hour.

Giffut, I appreciate the suggestion but honestly I don't really want to spend any more money than I have to on the Mac Pro 3,1 considering it will be shut down once I get the new machine.

Does anyone know of a program utility that would give me an indication of the file transfer speeds I'm getting either between the MP and MBP via ethernet or from the MP to the Drobo (via the MBP) utilizing both the ethernet and TB cable?

 

[giffut]

You ...

... can use Activity Monitor for this: Choose the HD section, there you can monitor the data throughput shown in MB/s.

 

[Michael73]

... can use Activity Monitor for this: Choose the HD section, there you can monitor the data throughput shown in MB/s.

Perfect. After the initial 800GB transfer last week, the Drobo was boxed. Tomorrow should be round two when I have to transfer 1.25TB. I'll fire up the AM on the MBP to see how it goes and report back.

 

[Michael73]

Perfect. After the initial 800GB transfer last week, the Drobo was boxed. Tomorrow should be round two when I have to transfer 1.25TB. I'll fire up the AM on the MBP to see how it goes and report back.

Looks like I'm at 100MB/s sustained.

Of course it bounces around a bit and it seems to peak around 120MB/s and troughs around 75MB/s.

I'm not sure if that good or not? Anyone know?