3-4 DAYS?!? Really?

[deconstruct60]

.... The plan is to use the Drobo 5D I got a few months ago and create a partition to use as my TM drive. It'll be connected to the nMP via Thunderbolt.

Hopefully can use the other partition of the Drobo 5D for some of this other stuff.

If I were just transferring stuff in my Documents file, it would be one thing but I need to set up the whole computer and I'm worried I might goof stuff up. For example, my entire Win7 VM is in a directory inside of the Documents folder and I can't afford to mess that up. I think I'm going the Migration Assistant route.

You can move a VM image to a new folder and it will still run. It is just a file (or set of files ). There should be something in the user guide for you VM application that outlines what to use to move the file around if there is some default link to where "click and run" icons are linked to the files.

Piling everything into into one gigantic pile ( e.g. throwing just everything to a single user directory) is large mismatch with this Mac Pro design. It is not designed as the packrat's best friend system.

The only advantage the guy at the Apple store said to use TDM was that while using TDM, the machine remains usable whereas when using MA you're completely locked out of using the machines while the cloning occurs.

Firewire target disk mode (TDM) is a lock out. Can't have two OS thinking they "own" a disk at the same time; at least not running normal HFS+ filesystem.

Even the Apple support docs outline this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10725


[ Aside. joe-blow blue shirt walking around an Apple store doesn't necessarily know much in depth at all. ]

Why would Ethernet be faster than FW800? Everything I've read / heard is that FW800 outpaces Ethernet. Am I missing something?

Again it isn't whether the transport media is "faster" but whether it is faster than the HDD. If have a clean 1GbE ( gigabit/s Ethernet ) path between the two devices it is good. 1GbE means not in target disk mode. Not particularly a good idea to be significantly changing a disk while trying to copy from it, but OS would still be running.

You need to get as much data off of the cMP as possible. Please tell me you are not planning on filling 900GB of the 1TB drive immediately!!!

+1

SSDs ( like HDDs ) generally perform better (for different reasons) if you don't fill them up to the brim.

Sounds like you are in desperate need of external storage. I highly recommend you get one of the Seagate Thunderbolt sleds or USB3 connectors for one their GoFlex drives. You can plug in any SATA drive directly to the connector and get to it as fast as the drive hardware will allow.

You mention a Drobo so it sounds like you will have an external storage. Can't really use the Drobo as single drive enclosure, but it is most definately a place were can prune out some of that bulk to before invoke the Migration assistant.

For example

0. run full Time Machine backup on old system.
1. prune the large bulk
2. reboot into target disk mode.
3. Run migration assistant to pull over the smaller set.
4. post migration drop down into the TM folders and pull out the bulky folders and drop onto the Drobo partition for you bulk storage.


You can throw the VM image(s) onto the Drobo for example. ( if were using them in dual VM image/BootCamp there is some necessity to put on a partitioned internal SSD. But a plain HFS+ there is little to no upside of keeping that internal if already engaging TB external storage. )

 

[Michael73]

You need to get as much data off of the cMP as possible. Please tell me you are not planning on filling 900GB of the 1TB drive immediately!!! Sounds like you are in desperate need of external storage.

Get everything you don't absolutely need off the old machine before using the migration assistant.

To me filling an SSD to 90%+ right off the bat is kinda crazy. Maybe the biggest advantage the nMP has over the old machine is very fast external I/O.

Under different circumstance, you could be my mom nagging me to do something I know I need to do

First off, let me say I have a Drobo 5D loaded up with 15TB (3TB x 5) of drives that will be connected to the nMP via TB, so I have plenty of external storage. The plan is to partition it so that I have 3TB for a Time Machine drive and the rest as just bulk storage.

That said, I've just off loaded my Movies and Music directories (and one or two others) to one of my drives in my MP 3,1 with some extra room. All told I just lightened up my Macintosh HD by over 520GB so now I'm down to around 450GB. I could also offload my Pictures directory which has an additional 147GB so that gets me down to just 303GB. Not too bad, eh?

So, at this point I've just copied the directories from one drive to the other. I haven't actually trashed them yet on my Macintosh HD. Anyone know what will happen if I do that and then try and open iPhoto, iTunes or iMovie?

 

[chfilm]

Look forward to thunderbolt heavenly speeds

 

[elvisizer]

Yup, get a TB>FW800 adaptor and use "Target Disk Mode"
I have NOT done this so I'm not 100% sure that will work with an adaptor.

anything a firewire port can do, a firewire adapter on a thunderbolt bus can do . . . including target disk mode.

 

[dhazeghi]

It is likely that confusion and miscommunication are at play here.

Yes, FW800 is your best bet.

If it is coming from a reasonably fast mechanical hard drive you may top out at 100MB/sec or so.

Which is faster than you'll see with FW800 (maxes out around 85MB/s). And a good HDD should get 130MB/s easily.

I'd vote for a USB 3.0 enclosure. Costs about the same as the TB-FW800 adapter, and can be reused later when you inevitably add external storage to the Mac Pro to supplement the SSD.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

I just transferred 1.88gb over usb 2.0 and it took 20 hours

1,88 GigaByte or TeraByte?
1,88 GB over USB 2.0, even if thousands of small files, should not take longer than two minutes.
USB 2.0 has top speeds of 37 MB/s, an average speed of 20 MB/s when copying lots and lots of small files, and only at that speed, 1,88 TB would take roughly 27 hours.

 

[Consultant]

Should be done in one day on firewire or gigabit ethernet.

Don't copy by folders. Use migration assistant if you want it to be setup just like your old computer.

Under different circumstance, you could be my mom nagging me to do something I know I need to do

First off, let me say I have a Drobo 5D loaded up with 15TB (3TB x 5) of drives that will be connected to the nMP via TB, so I have plenty of external storage. The plan is to partition it so that I have 3TB for a Time Machine drive and the rest as just bulk storage.

That said, I've just off loaded my Movies and Music directories (and one or two others) to one of my drives in my MP 3,1 with some extra room. All told I just lightened up my Macintosh HD by over 520GB so now I'm down to around 450GB. I could also offload my Pictures directory which has an additional 147GB so that gets me down to just 303GB. Not too bad, eh?

So, at this point I've just copied the directories from one drive to the other. I haven't actually trashed them yet on my Macintosh HD. Anyone know what will happen if I do that and then try and open iPhoto, iTunes or iMovie?

 

[RoastingPig]

1,88 GigaByte or TeraByte?
1,88 GB over USB 2.0, even if thousands of small files, should not take longer than two minutes.
USB 2.0 has top speeds of 37 MB/s, an average speed of 20 MB/s when copying lots and lots of small files, and only at that speed, 1,88 TB would take roughly 27 hours.

terrabytes..my bad....it was usb2 drives on usb3 ..they were averaging like 42mb/s

 

[ha1o2surfer]

For block copy, I think the target disk needs to be at least as big as the source. Most people going to nMP will be migrating from bigger HDD to smaller SSD.

Also, and this may be dated/wrong, but isn't it a bad idea to write to every block on an SSD (even with blocks marked as free on in the file system)? I somehow thought that did bad things to the SSD controller's performance. Again, this may be old or wrong, but I think I was told to NOT do block clones to SSD in the past.

hmm I wasn't aware of any issues with doing block cloning on SSD's. I don't see how it could be a bad thing. The backup built into windows systems does block level. I just like it because it's faster. I've gone through a couple SSD's without any issues. Guess everyone's results may vary.

 

[nathan43082]

There is no FireWire on the Mac Pro X.

There's also no Thunderbolt, USB, headphone jack, nor even a place to plug in a power cord on the Mac Pro X.

 

[flatfoot]

...

Again it isn't whether the transport media is "faster" but whether it is faster than the HDD. If have a clean 1GbE ( gigabit/s Ethernet ) path between the two devices it is good. 1GbE means not in target disk mode. Not particularly a good idea to be significantly changing a disk while trying to copy from it, but OS would still be running.

...

In my post (which the OP was referring to with the question you answered here) I suggested using Migration Assistant via Ethernet.

Migration Assistant locks both the source and target Macs when using Ethernet, so there can't be corruptions.

 

[Bear]

The nMP arrives on Thursday. I need to migrate 960GB from the Macintosh HD on my existing MP 3,1 to the new machine. Is FW800 the fastest protocol to do this? Some guy today at the Apple store told me with that much data I'm looking at 3-4 days over FW800 using migration assistant? Really? Is there a faster way?

Using a Time Machine backup, it took under 4 hours to use Migration Assistant on about 600GB of data and apps with a fresh install of OS X on my iMac.

I'd say you're looking at under a day with FW800, probably under 12 hours. If you can get the disk into a USB 3 enclosure, it would be faster.