USB-C cable issues...

[iKnowMr.Jobs]

Just purchased a new MacBook Pro yesterday. So far, everything seems to be going pretty great with the machine itself. Love it when I get the chance to use it (been swamped with work today & will be tomorrow so the opportunity to play with it has been minimal). But yesterday when opening up my new toy and trying to migrate the data off my old Air, I did have a bit of difficulty.

I do my Time Machine backup to an external SSD inside this enclosure. I've been using it with my Air for the past six months and it's been pretty great so far. For restoring the backup to my new Pro, I bought this cable to get the data off the drive (Benson Leung approved). Problem was the the drive wasn't recognized by the Pro when I plugged it in with the new cable (still works fine on the Air with the included USB 3 cable). Oddly enough, the new Pro recognized my old Air thought that new cable when I plugged it in through Migration Assistant and it moved my data (albeit slowly) to my Pro. I can't determine why this is the case. Any thoughts? Maybe a different cable?

 

[thesaint024]

Just purchased a new MacBook Pro yesterday. So far, everything seems to be going pretty great with the machine itself. Love it when I get the chance to use it (been swamped with work today & will be tomorrow so the opportunity to play with it has been minimal). But yesterday when opening up my new toy and trying to migrate the data off my old Air, I did have a bit of difficulty.

I do my Time Machine backup to an external SSD inside this enclosure. I've been using it with my Air for the past six months and it's been pretty great so far. For restoring the backup to my new Pro, I bought this cable to get the data off the drive (Benson Leung approved). Problem was the the drive wasn't recognized by the Pro when I plugged it in with the new cable (still works fine on the Air with the included USB 3 cable). Oddly enough, the new Pro recognized my old Air thought that new cable when I plugged it in through Migration Assistant and it moved my data (albeit slowly) to my Pro. I can't determine why this is the case. Any thoughts? Maybe a different cable?

Did you try to connect through a different port? I've heard of this working before. Maybe the cable is not compatible with the SSD/enclosure, i.e. faulty or plain incompatible for some reason. Different cable is one option, but probably require re-ordering.

Since you know the original usb 3 cable worked, I would try an adapter. This is just for troubleshooting or just curiosity since you got it to transfer already. I had some initial pains with trying to get things to work. Easy to isolate what the actual problem is if you have other ways of testing. It was almost always a cable or adapter. Even if they are Benson Leung approved, they may not be totally compatible with a particular peripheral for whatever reason.

 

[iKnowMr.Jobs]

Did you try to connect through a different port? I've heard of this working before. Maybe the cable is not compatible with the SSD/enclosure, i.e. faulty or plain incompatible for some reason. Different cable is one option, but probably require re-ordering.

Since you know the original usb 3 cable worked, I would try an adapter. This is just for troubleshooting or just curiosity since you got it to transfer already. I had some initial pains with trying to get things to work. Easy to isolate what the actual problem is if you have other ways of testing. It was almost always a cable or adapter. Even if they are Benson Leung approved, they may not be totally compatible with a particular peripheral for whatever reason.

I don't have a USB C to type A adapter yet (Apple Store was totally out of them when I picked up my machine) and I did try all 4 ports on the computer and non of them work. Oddly enough, the cable will charge my Pro via an iPad power adapter no issues. It seems to be the data portion of the cable.

 

[thesaint024]

I don't have a USB C to type A adapter yet (Apple Store was totally out of them when I picked up my machine) and I did try all 4 ports on the computer and non of them work. Oddly enough, the cable will charge my Pro via an iPad power adapter no issues. It seems to be the data portion of the cable.

That is odd especially since it's on the Leung approved list. I wouldn't use the Apple adapter anyway (too big). Just get the Rankie, Aukey or Anker from Amazon, after saying it 5 times fast. Super small and much cheaper. I am betting it will work and the cable has some weird compatibility issue.

 

[iKnowMr.Jobs]

That is odd especially since it's on the Leung approved list. I wouldn't use the Apple adapter anyway (too big). Just get the Rankie, Aukey or Anker from Amazon, after saying it 5 times fast. Super small and much cheaper. I am betting it will work and the cable has some weird compatibility issue.

Thanks for the tip on the adapter. I was only gonna go for Apple's because it's only $9 & I live 15 minutes away from an Apple Store. I will be ordering a new cable to see if it works out better. I just wanna do everything possible to avoid carrying around adapters if I can.

 

[thesaint024]

Thanks for the tip on the adapter. I was only gonna go for Apple's because it's only $9 & I live 15 minutes away from an Apple Store. I will be ordering a new cable to see if it works out better. I just wanna do everything possible to avoid carrying around adapters if I can.

Might as well get a 2-pack of adapters anyway, beyond just testing this situation. You likely have usb-a devices that you'll want adapters for at some point. I keep one of these one inch adapters with my power brick for whenever I'm mobile. I've never been caught and HAD to use it, but I anticipate a flash drive or HDD at some point in my MBP's life. Again, just $8 or $9 for two.

 

[iKnowMr.Jobs]

Might as well get a 2-pack of adapters anyway, beyond just testing this situation. You likely have usb-a devices that you'll want adapters for at some point. I keep one of these one inch adapters with my power brick for whenever I'm mobile. I've never been caught and HAD to use it, but I anticipate a flash drive or HDD at some point in my MBP's life. Again, just $8 or $9 for two.

Yup. Definitely will be getting at least one to throw in my bag for the just-in-case scenario. Beyond my Time Machine backup, the only other things I plugged regularly into my Air were a flash drive (Mainly for moving my documents to my university computers to print them) and an SD card from my camera (if only Apple shoehorned a Micro SD card slot into this thing, they probably would've gotten less criticism from people).

I
'd also like to note one more thing about my external SSD. There is an indicator light on it that blinks when its powered and ready to go. On my MacBook Pro, the cable seems to not even power it because the light never goes off.