Hooking a 2008 Mac Pro up to a late 2013 Mac Pro

[JaredBa]

Hey All,

I'm trying to transfer a few things from my 2008 Mac Pro tower to my two year old Mac Pro cylinder/trashcan 2013 Mac Pro. Would a simple USB to USB do it? Or do I need something more exotic? Or has Apple in its wisdom made it impossible all together?

 

[monokakata]

Unless I've misunderstood what you want to do, this should work:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18722?locale=en_US

 

[Flint Ironstag]

USB will be limited by the speed of USB2 in the 2008. Wifi is also slow as hell and often fails. Couple of easy options:

Ensure both machines are fully updated:

- connect both macs via ethernet (wifi is too slow) and run migration assistant

or

- put the 2008 in target disk mode and run migration assistant

or

depending on if the '08 is running a new enough OS, put the '13 in target disk mode, and clone the '08's drive to it. This is definitely a quick & dirty to get up & running. I would keep a fresh OS on the '13 and find a way to run migration assistant. Or just copy your home folder over.

[edit] ack, after all that I just realized that OP only wanted to transfer a few things over...

 

[ActionableMango]

Hey All,

I'm trying to transfer a few things from my 2008 Mac Pro tower to my two year old Mac Pro cylinder/trashcan 2013 Mac Pro. Would a simple USB to USB do it? Or do I need something more exotic? Or has Apple in its wisdom made it impossible all together?

If you really mean "a few things" then a USB thumbdrive would be easiest.

For a lot of data, Ethernet and file sharing will be fastest.

For a full migration, Flint has good advice (via Ethernet).

I have doubts about Target Disk Mode though--there are challenges there because the 2013 doesn't have Firewire and the 2008 doesn't have Thunderbolt. I don't see how to do this without expensive adapters that you probably don't have.

 

[marioman38]

You can't use USB. You can use Ethernet, or FW800 on your 2008 with a FW800 to Thunderbolt adapter ($30) on your 2013. You can use migration assistant with either cable, or boot the 2008 in target disk mode when connected via FireWire by holding command-T on startup. You can also have both computers on the same network either Ethernet (preferred) or wifi and press command-k when you Mac is started up and you are in finder. Then type AFP://10.0.1.12 but use the other macs local IP instead of that made up example. Make sure you have file sharing turned on in system preferences.

Like others have said. If it's just a few things, use a USB flash drive. You can get a 64gb for something like $15 on amazon and 128gb for $20.