8-30 MB/s Migration speeds with Thunderbolt cable

[iMas70]

I'm working on migrating everything from my Mac Mini to my new iMac using a Thunderbolt cable. Just under 900GB. The status bar is showing transfer speeds in the 8-30 MB/s range. I thought it would be much faster with the TB cable?

 

[Weaselboy]

What kind of drives are in both Macs? You are correct the TB connection is capable of much higher speeds that what you are seeing, but it will still be limited by the disk transfer speeds in the Macs. If the old Mini has a hard drive, that would explain it.

 

[iMas70]

Yes, it's pulling from the Mini's hard drive. Myself and Apple support couldn't get it to pull from my Time Capsule so I have to do it this way. 13 hours left...

 

[Weaselboy]

Yes, it's pulling from the Mini's hard drive. Myself and Apple support couldn't get it to pull from my Time Capsule so I have to do it this way. 13 hours left...

Yeah... that's the problem then. With the overhead of Migration Assistant and the slow hard drive on the Mini, that is about what I would expect you would get for transfer speed.

I used a TB cable with a USB-C adaptor to migrate from my 2014 rMBP to my new MBP (both with PCIe flash storage) and it was really fast.