Migration assistant iMac using ethernet

[Wpaulo]

Has anyone used migration assistant with ethernet cable to move files from old iMac to a new M1 iMac? Any issues?

 

[Agile55]

Yes, on Fri. from a 2007 iMac on El Capitan to my M1 & it took sev. hrs but chalked it up to the old OS the 2007 was on.

 

[loekf]

Has anyone used migration assistant with ethernet cable to move files from old iMac to a new M1 iMac? Any issues?

No, works fine. Just use a direct cable, no WIFI. Much faster.

 

[Fishrrman]

loekf wrote:
"Just use a direct cable, no WIFI. Much faster."

What KIND of "direct cable"?
USB...?
Something else...?

 

[Wpaulo]

loekf wrote:
"Just use a direct cable, no WIFI. Much faster."

What KIND of "direct cable"?
USB...?
Something else...?

I just set up my new 24 inch M1 iMac using an ethernet cable to connect to my old iMac everything worked very well and it took about an hour and 45 minutes. There was a message on the screen that said if I use the thunderbolt cable it would be faster.

 

[Agile55]

I just set up my new 24 inch M1 iMac using an ethernet cable to connect to my old iMac everything worked very well and it took about an hour and 45 minutes. There was a message on the screen that said if I use the thunderbolt cable it would be faster.

Nice to know my 2007 transfer time was sim. to yours WP.

 

[mpetrides]

I (mistakenly it would appear) thought that if I connected my 16 inch MBP to my new M1 iMac using a USB-C cable I would be able to do the migration over that hard-wired connection. But it appeared to have set up a peer-to-peer network that did the transfer at speeds of 50 Mbps most of the time, a quarter of that some of the time. So the migration of about 450 GB took several hours.

Does anybody know whether transfer over a USB-C connection is possible and, if so, how one accomplishes this.

I'm mostly just curious at this point since I hope not to have to do this again in at least several years.

 

[Wpaulo]

Nice to know my 2007 transfer time was sim. to yours WP.

Mine was a late 2012 iMac.

 

[colodane]

You will get the fastest migration if you use a quality ethernet cable - I believe that CAT6 or above is preferred. My recollection is that when I did it a few years ago, I had some initial frustration when using a CAT 5 cable.

 

[eelpout]

You will get the fastest migration if you use a quality ethernet cable - I believe that CAT6 or above is preferred. My recollection is that when I did it a few years ago, I had some initial frustration when using a CAT 5 cable.

Does anybody know whether transfer over a USB-C connection is possible and, if so, how one accomplishes this.

Based on my experience yesterday when using MA for a 13" MBP (Intel) -> 14" MBP (M1) transfer, a standard USB-C cable doesn't work; even though the Macs show up in the Sys Info diagnostic on both sides, MA just ignores it. I believe it has to be a Thunderbolt cable. The one thing I didn't try was to set up some kind of bridge before starting MA by using a server connection from the Finder, maybe that's the trick.

I tried using Ethernet too (after some pains of getting the Asix drivers installed on both sides). MA did actually see the Ethernet link, but it ended up using Peer to Peer Wi-Fi anyway as it gauged it be about 20 MB/s faster in it's connection status (60 MB/s vs. 39 MB/s) . Uh, OK???

Actually my wife's 24' iMac is due in tomorrow so I get to do this again with an old Mac Mini. I'll probably set up a direct Ethernet cable link between the two, bypassing any router (using the 2-Mac, mount as server method) and see if MA recognizes the link any better.