New MBP, Transferring 180GB's from Old PC

[Trvlngnrs]

Is there anything special that need to be done to the Mac before transferring files to it from my old laptop? The biggest files are MP3's and pictures.

On the old laptop, I'll run defrag, virus and malware scanners first.

There is a computer store in town that specializes in Apple's. They will transfer everything for $50. I'm thinking of going that route, as I've not owned an Apple before. Is there computer-to-computer transfer kits for PC-to-Apple as there is for PC-to-PC?

Comments?


Thanks,
Trvlngnrs

 

[cluthz]

Easiest way would to turn on sharing on the PC and copy stuff over

 

[Lunchb0x8]

I am doing the same thing, trust me, get the two machines on the same network (ethernet is your fastest little buddy), and browse to the other machine via (if windows) SMB://<IP Address> and then put in your credentials and connect, browse to the folders you need to copy, and get going.

Will probably take a fair few hours, but will save you $50 and you will get a bit of networking experience in checking your permissions and IP adresses.

Have fun, do it yourself!!

 

[Hellhammer]

Easiest way would to turn on sharing on the PC and copy stuff over

This^ or get an enclosure and stick the drive there. Transferring 180GB over network, especially wireless is going to take you a nice while (maximum of ~10MB/s = 600MB/m = 300 minutes for 180GB = 5 hours and that's the theoretical maximum, with USB it's up to 5 time faster). With wireless depending on your router it might take a day

 

[McMoronic]

Easy transfer solution

Don't waste money on services that aren't worth it.
If the files being copied are just music and pictures, just copy the data onto a firewire or usb external and transfer to the new lappy. That would be the most elementary way to do it.
If you don't want to do that, use papaya or opera direct to set up filesharing and download. This method will take a lot more time. So I'd recommend copying the data to an external. It shouldn't take more than 1 hour for everything to complete.

 

[cluthz]

This^ or get an enclosure and stick the drive there. Transferring 180GB over network, especially wireless is going to take you a nice while (maximum of ~10MB/s = 600MB/m = 300 minutes for 180GB = 5 hours and that's the theoretical maximum, with USB it's up to 5 time faster). With wireless depending on your router it might take a day

GBit ethernet is theoretically capable 100MB/sec, I manage over 30MB/sec on my home network, USB 2.0 will not be much faster.

 

[Hellhammer]

GBit ethernet is theoretically capable 100MB/sec, I manage over 30MB/sec on my home network, USB 2.0 will not be much faster.

If you have Gbit cable then yes. Most Ethernet cables are 100Mbit/s which is almost 5 times slower than USB 2.0. If we are accurate, Gbit Ethernet's theoretical maximum is 125MB/s i.e. 1000Mb/s

It's the easiest option if you have Gbit cable but with 100Mbit/s, it's going to suck

 

[McMoronic]

Lol

Doesn't it make you wish for an esata port on the mbp since 3.0 is a while away?

 

[Hellhammer]

Doesn't it make you wish for an esata port on the mbp since 3.0 is a while away?

No, I want LightPeak @100Gb/s

Apple would've added eSATA already if they wanted. They clearly don't and prefer FireWire which is Apple's trademark. eSATA is useless for other than external HDs thus Apple doesn't seem to like it (they have Time Capsule which requires no wires )

 

[McMoronic]

haha fair enough. OP should get a FW external )

 

[cluthz]

If you have Gbit cable then yes. Most Ethernet cables are 100Mbit/s which is almost 5 times slower than USB 2.0. If we are accurate, Gbit Ethernet's theoretical maximum is 125MB/s i.e. 1000Mb/s

It's the easiest option if you have Gbit cable but with 100Mbit/s, it's going to suck

Apple have had GBit ethernet standard since 2000.
My 6-7 yr old P4 2.0GHz also have GBit ethernet, all semi high end machine have had GBit since mid 2005. Standard cat5 TP cables are capable of GBit ethernet, you can get a crossed cable for $5, or less which is the only thing you need. I also think MBPs are capable of crossing cables itself, so I guess any normal cat5 TP cable will do.

If you don't wanna use any money on transferring files ethernet is the way to do, and even with 100mbit ethernet you could just leave it overnight, as it seems like he is wanting a one time only solution.


And if you wanna be picky about it, Gigabit ethernet uses 8b/10b encoding, which mean you'll need 10bit bandwidth to send 8bit. 8 bit of data are transmitted as a 10-bit entity called a symbol, or character. The low 5 bit of data are encoded into a 6-bit group (the 5b/6b portion) and the top 3 bits are encoded into a 4-bit group (the 3b/4b portion). These code groups are concatenated together to form the 10-bit symbol that is transmitted on the wire.

Thus 100 MB theoretically max on 1000mbit

 

[Hellhammer]

Thus 100 MB theoretically max on 1000mbit

Ummh.. What you mean? 100MB ≠ 1000Mbit

Gbit ethernet's theoretical maximum is 1Gbit/s = 1000Mbit/s = 125MB/s

In real world, you won't really achieve speeds over 100MB/s though. This is more or less irrelevant though so if OP can leave it overnight, then any ethernet cable is fine

 

[cluthz]

Ummh.. What you mean? 100MB ≠ 1000Mbit

Gbit ethernet's theoretical maximum is 1Gbit/s = 1000Mbit/s = 125MB/s

In real world, you won't really achieve speeds over 100MB/s though. This is more or less irrelevant though so if OP can leave it overnight, then any ethernet cable is fine

Did you read the end of my post?
To transfer 8 bit of data you must convert it to 10 bit, thus the you use 10 bit each time you send 8 bit, because of the 8b/10b encoding.

So the bandwidth is indeed 125MB/sec, but since the data is encoded in 10 bit pr 8 bit you'll get 100MB/sec of data thru it.

8 bit of data are transmitted as a 10-bit entity called a symbol, or character. The low 5 bit of data are encoded into a 6-bit group (the 5b/6b portion) and the top 3 bits are encoded into a 4-bit group (the 3b/4b portion). These code groups are concatenated together to form the 10-bit symbol that is transmitted on the wire.

 

[Hellhammer]

Did you read the end of my post?
To transfer 8 bit of data you must convert it to 10 bit, thus the you use 10 bit each time you send 8 bit, because of the 8b/10b encoding.

So the bandwidth is indeed 125MB/sec, but since the data is encoded in 10 bit pr 8 bit you'll get 100MB/sec of data thru it.

Makes sense now! Didn't get the meaning of your ending, too complicated for me So in real world, you can't even get 100MB/s, more like ~80MB/s due encoding?

One thing I like about this site (among many others) is that people actually know something they are talking about, not just spreading various crap you learn from Wikipedia