Switching from PC to Mac... question

[The Black Rock]

I'm switching as soon as the new iMacs are released but I have had this question. I have several Gigs of files on this PC what should I do to transfer them over to the iMac?

I don't want to buy that Move2Mac by Detto. I find it too slow for transerring my files over, and I don't think that it will do everything I need. I'd rather not pay for anything I don't need. Can I do this by firewire cable?

Things to keep in mind:

I don't have a burner, CD or DVD.

I don't have USB 2.0.

I don't have an external drive.

I have several dozen Gigs.

What should I do?

 

[pianodude123]

suggestion

toughy, I dont know whether you can even find a male to male connecter cable. What kind of PC are you using..sounds cheap! Good thing you are going to switch! You can find a low cost burner or if your "knowledge and expertise" with computers is above normal, you can try and use the drive in the PC, if it has 2 bays for hdds, put the IMAC's drive in it. But we are not responsible for anything that happens to the computer like that and I dont know how the drive would work compatibility wise. You would have to change the pins to slave and vise versa. If you purchase the APP im sure one of the geeks at the genius bar will help you! happy buying!

 

[h0e0h]

get a 6 pin to 6 pin firewire cable from like radio shack or something and when the mac starts up i think that you can hold H or something and it will allow you to access the iMac as an external HD so you can transfer your files that way. Someone correct me if i'm wrong... but that's at least the concept. I know that it will work with Mac-to-Mac transfers, i'm not as sure about PC-to-Mac transfers...

 

[sarae]

get a 6 pin to 6 pin firewire cable from like radio shack or something and when the mac starts up i think that you can hold H or something and it will allow you to access the iMac as an external HD so you can transfer your files that way. Someone correct me if i'm wrong... but that's at least the concept. I know that it will work with Mac-to-Mac transfers, i'm not as sure about PC-to-Mac transfers...

It's T, not H, I believe. Haven't used it myself, but I'm sure others have

 

[panphage]

You can turn your ibook into a firewire external hard drive by holding down the "T" (not "H") key as the ibook boots. The problem with this is that your PC can't write to the ibook's harddrive because it doesn't know how. You could either get MacOpener (http://www.dataviz.com/products/macopener/ but it's $50!!!) or what I would do: Set up my pc for file sharing and do the whole thing over ethernet. Not wireless, ethernet. Very fast so long as both computers are wired. It could probably be done directly via a crossover cable but I have no idea how to set that up. I have a router so I'd just plug them both into the router and mount the PC share drive on my mac.

 

[zakatov]

Just use Ethernet.
Get any Cat-5 RJ-45 Cable and plug em in. Crossover or not, it doesn't matter. Share ur stuff on PC, and drag/drop in Finder

 

[The Black Rock]

Yes sarae is right it's T. The T stands for Target Disk Mode. I don't think that the PC can read a Mac formatted drive, and this is why I'd rather have the Mac read the PC instead. I know Mac's can read Windows formatted drives (both FAT32 and NTFS).

And no it wasn't a "cheap" PC either, it's a real nice Sony Vaio. It was bought in 2001. The DVD+/-RW broke down around Autumn. It has Sony's implemetation of IEEE 1394 (i.e. i.Link) in 2 ports. It came out before USB 2.0 came out, and wouldn't really want to use that even if I could. I'm not disassembling the iMac for anything other than RAM upgrades.

I'm very much leaning towards using a firewire cable but I don't know how that works on PC to Mac transfer. Anyone know?

 

[expergo]

Add the firewire port to the network configuration in your imac so that it acts as a network adapter.

Your pc should already have the firewire port as a network adapter.

In your iMac, set the IP address of the firewire network manually and just put something like 192.168.1.1 as the ip and 255.255.255.0 as the subnet. Apply. Done.

In your PC, right click on "My network places", choose properties. Do you see your firewire adapter there? You should. RIght click->properties. I don't remember how it exactly looks, but choose the tcp/ip section where you can fill in your IP address, set it to 192.168.1.2 and the subnet to 255.255.255.0. Apply.

Now you've just created your network. Share your drives on your Pc, and you should be able to access them on the mac.

 

[The Black Rock]

Regarding Ethernet,

I don't have Gigabit ethernet so it will go at normal ethernet speeds. I think normal ethernet speed is about 11Mbps or about 1.375MBps. Remember I have dozens of Gigs of stuff on here. Let's just call it 40 GBs, for a nice round number. How long will that take at a top speed of 1.375MBps?

It rounds to about 8 hours by my calculations. I guess I could do it. But doing it by firewire would (in theory) be almost 40x faster.

I'd really rather not sit and wait for 8 hours. 12 minutes is more my ken, but can it be done?

 

[The Black Rock]

Add the firewire port to the network configuration in your imac so that it acts as a network adapter.

Your pc should already have the firewire port as a network adapter.

In your iMac, set the IP address of the firewire network manually and just put something like 192.168.1.1 as the ip and 255.255.255.0 as the subnet. Apply. Done.

In your PC, right click on "My network places", choose properties. Do you see your firewire adapter there? You should. RIght click->properties. I don't remember how it exactly looks, but choose the tcp/ip section where you can fill in your IP address, set it to 192.168.1.2 and the subnet to 255.255.255.0. Apply.

Now you've just created your network. Share your drives on your Pc, and you should be able to access them on the mac.

Thank you very much expergo! I will try it when I get the iMac. Once I do I'll be able to transfer my 40+ Gigabytes of files to the iMac and then burn most of them to DVD.

 

[ravenvii]

Regarding Ethernet,

I don't have Gigabit ethernet so it will go at normal ethernet speeds. Normal ethernet speed is about 11Mbps or about 1.375MBps. Remember I have dosens of Gigs of stuff on here. Let's just call it 40 GBs, for a nice round number. How long will that take at a top speed of 1.375MBps?

It rounds to about 8 hours by my calculations. I guess I could do it. But doing it by firewire would (in theory) be almost 40x faster.

I'd really rather not sit and wait for 8 hours. 12 minutes is more my ken, but can it be done?

... Too bad? If you REALLY want to transfer the stuff, you WILL wait 8 hours. Set it up at night and go to bed. What's the big deal? Not like you have to do it ever again anyway.

 

[The Black Rock]

... Too bad? If you REALLY want to transfer the stuff, you WILL wait 8 hours. Set it up at night and go to bed. What's the big deal? Not like you have to do it ever again anyway.

Thanks anyway Raven VII, I prefer expergo's answer. It was, you know, a real answer, rather than just a "suck it up".

The big deal is obviously, if I can do it faster why shouldn't I?

 

[twoodcc]

Regarding Ethernet,

I don't have Gigabit ethernet so it will go at normal ethernet speeds. I think normal ethernet speed is about 11Mbps or about 1.375MBps. Remember I have dozens of Gigs of stuff on here. Let's just call it 40 GBs, for a nice round number. How long will that take at a top speed of 1.375MBps?

It rounds to about 8 hours by my calculations. I guess I could do it. But doing it by firewire would (in theory) be almost 40x faster.

I'd really rather not sit and wait for 8 hours. 12 minutes is more my ken, but can it be done?

11mbps? i thought it was 100?

 

[plinden]

Regarding Ethernet,

I don't have Gigabit ethernet so it will go at normal ethernet speeds. I think normal ethernet speed is about 11Mbps or about 1.375MBps. Remember I have dozens of Gigs of stuff on here. Let's just call it 40 GBs, for a nice round number. How long will that take at a top speed of 1.375MBps?

It rounds to about 8 hours by my calculations. I guess I could do it. But doing it by firewire would (in theory) be almost 40x faster.

I'd really rather not sit and wait for 8 hours. 12 minutes is more my ken, but can it be done?

Remember you are not going to get up to the maximum firewire transfer rate. You will be limited more by the read/write speed of your hard drives. It should still be faster than ethernet (100MB/s is standard, not 10MB/s). I get 170MB/s transferring files to my external USB2.0 HD. You may get higher sustained rate with firewire but it won't be much more.

 

[Mechcozmo]

I don't have Gigabit ethernet so it will go at normal ethernet speeds. I think normal ethernet speed is about 11Mbps or about 1.375MBps. Remember I have dozens of Gigs of stuff on here. Let's just call it 40 GBs, for a nice round number. How long will that take at a top speed of 1.375MBps?

Its Base10/100T ethernet that both computers have. 100 Mbps. 11 Mbps is for 802.11b. Thats why we told you not to go wireless, but wired. 100 Mbps is about 12.5 MBps. That's pretty good. Leave it sit for a couple of hours (at 750 MB per minute, [~1 CD] it will take you 54 minutes and a bit.

40*1024 (give me 40 GB in MB) divided by 750 is 54 ish.

 

[26139]

Geez...

Okay...so you have quite the outdated computer...you are not willing to spend any money....and you want the data to transfer fast...
Firewire...or....as previously mentioned, SUCK IT UP and do an ethernet transfer.

 

[The Black Rock]

Okay...so you have quite the outdated computer...you are not willing to spend any money....and you want the data to transfer fast...
Firewire...or....as previously mentioned, SUCK IT UP and do an ethernet transfer.

The only thing I have stated I'm unwilling to buy is Detto's Move2Mac, as I find it a superfluous expense (when am I ever going to need it again? It has a speed of about 33MB per minute) All of them money I am willing to spend is going to towards the purchase of the iMac, is there a problem with this? Am I not allowed to seek solutions with materials I already have? Or do I have to try to do things the "appleretailguy" guy way? The best solution using the materials I already have has been presented what have you added with your post?

Answer the question I posed to Raven VII above: If I can do it faster why shouldn't I? What made you feel the need to come here (read at least some of the posts) and then comment the way you did?

I believe I have my answer. If it doesn't work I'll be back. Maybe if that happens you'll have something productive to say. I can only hope.

With regards to people who gave real answers and suggestions, thank you. 54 minutes does sound much better than around 8 hours. I still choose firewire for the higher sustainable speeds.

 

[Nickygoat]

If you're going to use Firewire Target Mode on your new iMac be aware that it won't work if you have a Bluetooth KB. The connection isn't made until the computer boots up. This also applies if you want to run fsck or in single user mode. You have to use a wired KB. If I understood your comments you're going to use the PC as a Firewire disk but it's early here so I'm a bit slow. Hope that helps and ignore the trolls

 

[Mechcozmo]

With regards to people who gave real answers and suggestions, thank you. 54 minutes does sound much better than around 8 hours. I still choose firewire for the higher sustainable speeds.

Don't do it via FireWire Target Disk Mode. Your PC can't read the Mac's hard drive and could wipe it. Annoying to reinstall OS X....

But if you can get them to network over FireWire, go ahead! Just that some older PeeCees won't like doing it that way. Ethernet is assured.

 

[DickArmAndHarT]

Just use Ethernet.
Get any Cat-5 RJ-45 Cable and plug em in. Crossover or not, it doesn't matter. Share ur stuff on PC, and drag/drop in Finder

Yeah do that and then look at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/54704/

for steps to connect the two computers and share the files.

Because its a pc, firewire holding t wont work because it wont have a firewire port, but if it does then it works fantastic. Good luck

 

[Yvan256]

toughy, I dont know whether you can even find a male to male connecter cable. What kind of PC are you using..sounds cheap! Good thing you are going to switch! You can find a low cost burner or if your "knowledge and expertise" with computers is above normal, you can try and use the drive in the PC, if it has 2 bays for hdds, put the IMAC's drive in it. But we are not responsible for anything that happens to the computer like that and I dont know how the drive would work compatibility wise. You would have to change the pins to slave and vise versa. If you purchase the APP im sure one of the geeks at the genius bar will help you! happy buying!

Windows cannot read/write Apple-formatted discs/floppies/HDs.

My tip would be to put your PC HD into an external FireWire (or USB 2.0) enclosure.

Edit: oups forget what I said, didn't read the PC was a laptop (not easy to remove the HD), and those ethernet/firewire solutions will be less of a hassle anyway.

 

[Uma888]

how about, set up a network (with an rj45 cable), ftp the Pc from the Mac and drag n drop the files you need

Mac OSx should network fine with your windows box, i might be wrong here as im not a mac user (...yet), but i am a linux user

make sure you have an ftp program on the mac

you might run in to trouble when loggin in to the windows box, you would also need to run "set up a network a home network" in windows from control panel

or doit it the easy way.

goto http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1491

this article shows how to set up an ftp server on your win xp box

log in via your mac
browse you files n drag n drop the file you need

 

[pianodude123]

You can turn your ibook into a firewire external hard drive by holding down the "T" (not "H") key as the ibook boots. The problem with this is that your PC can't write to the ibook's harddrive because it doesn't know how.

HAHAH stupid PC!!!!
use ethernet...if you have a network it will take about 10 mins for 6 gigs

 

[pianodude123]

Add the firewire port to the network configuration in your imac so that it acts as a network adapter.

Your pc should already have the firewire port as a network adapter.

In your iMac, set the IP address of the firewire network manually and just put something like 192.168.1.1 as the ip and 255.255.255.0 as the subnet. Apply. Done.

In your PC, right click on "My network places", choose properties. Do you see your firewire adapter there? You should. RIght click->properties. I don't remember how it exactly looks, but choose the tcp/ip section where you can fill in your IP address, set it to 192.168.1.2 and the subnet to 255.255.255.0. Apply.

Now you've just created your network. Share your drives on your Pc, and you should be able to access them on the mac.

Ahhhh...you are very clever!!! forget what i said! WOW! thats amazing i still cant believe it...i will PM you another ?. you are skilled. are you a certified IT?

 

[pianodude123]

11mbps? i thought it was 100?

100 for ethernet is what they say. 11 for wireless is what they say...

it is more like:

40 mb/s and

1.75 mbps