MP 1,1-5,1 Thunderbolt2 to Firewire800 bi-directional data flow

[paintstone]

I need bidirectional data transfer between a 2011 iMac Thunderbolt2 and a 2010 MacPro Firewire 800. I have an old firewire 800 cable that works so I thought to get a cable from Amazon to bridge the two but people are saying it's unidirectional.

There is terabytes of data I'm cleaning and transferring but probably 75% of the time it's going from thunderbolt to firewire, I might stream some data from SQL via firewire back to thunderbolt but can't seem to get a straight answer on how to do this fastest.

Thus my reason to ask the Jedi Counsel (you)

I've already connected them via a time machine ethernet but that's slow at like 100mb and thunderbolt2 is 20gb and firewire 800 is 800mb.

Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter

Easily connect your Thunderbolt-equipped Mac to a FireWire device with the Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter. Small and compact, it connects to the Thunderbolt port on your Mac computer, giving you a FireWire 800 port that supplies up to 7W for bus-powered peripherals like hard drives and aud...

www.amazon.com

I don't suppose there is a way to add/hack a thunderbolt adapter to my 2010 5,1 macpro?

 

[sfalatko]

I need bidirectional data transfer between a 2011 iMac Thunderbolt2 and a 2010 MacPro Firewire 800. I have an old firewire 800 cable that works so I thought to get a cable from Amazon to bridge the two but people are saying it's unidirectional.

There is terabytes of data I'm cleaning and transferring but probably 75% of the time it's going from thunderbolt to firewire, I might stream some data from SQL via firewire back to thunderbolt but can't seem to get a straight answer on how to do this fastest.

Thus my reason to ask the Jedi Counsel (you)

I've already connected them via a time machine ethernet but that's slow at like 100mb and thunderbolt2 is 20gb and firewire 800 is 800mb.

Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter

Easily connect your Thunderbolt-equipped Mac to a FireWire device with the Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter. Small and compact, it connects to the Thunderbolt port on your Mac computer, giving you a FireWire 800 port that supplies up to 7W for bus-powered peripherals like hard drives and aud...

www.amazon.com

I don't suppose there is a way to add/hack a thunderbolt adapter to my 2010 5,1 macpro?

Well can you hook both to a gigabit network with ethernet and then connect one to the other via finder using one as a "server"? They should be in the same IP range and you can connect to the "server" via its IP address.

If you enable file sharing in system preferences on the "source" machine you should be able to drag data from one finder window to the other and it will work reasonably fast. You can enable read/write and move data both ways.

If you have a program that is pulling data from a database on the other machine connect to the machine with data as the "server"

Once you connect one of the machines to the other as a server the data transfer can be bidirectional.

And Apple says it might be simpler - Use Ethernet to connect two Mac computers

 

[paintstone]

Well can you hook both to a gigabit network with ethernet and then connect one to the other via finder using one as a "server"? They should be in the same IP range and you can connect to the "server" via its IP address.

If you enable file sharing in system preferences on the "source" machine you should be able to drag data from one finder window to the other and it will work reasonably fast. You can enable read/write and move data both ways.

If you have a program that is pulling data from a database on the other machine connect to the machine with data as the "server"

Once you connect one of the machines to the other as a server the data transfer can be bidirectional.

And Apple says it might be simpler - Use Ethernet to connect two Mac computers

I do have file sharing setup, but this is also part of a MySQL setup issue so I can access this network remotely when I am out of town, at a clients office or on vacation. So ethernet is connected but because there is so much data to transfer back and forth multiple times for model training etc, 5TB on one machine, 20TB on another so I was looking for a solution with faster throughput. Ethernet is what 100mbs vs 10 or 20x that on firewire?

 

[paintstone]

Well can you hook both to a gigabit network with ethernet and then connect one to the other via finder using one as a "server"? They should be in the same IP range and you can connect to the "server" via its IP address.

Does mac support gigabit ethernet, I thought it was limited? My MacPro 5,1 I thought was an older since its a built in card I can't update it, so that means I would need a separate NIC card for the Macpro?

 

[monokakata]

MacPro 5,1 has gigabit ethernet.

If you're seeing 100, then somewhere along the chain the flow is getting choked. You can check "about this Mac" on the 2011 iMac and see what the ethernet spec is.

Is there any possibility of a "one time" move of all the data onto one of the machines, say the 5,1, and then only accessing that machine?

 

[posguy99]

Does mac support gigabit ethernet, I thought it was limited? My MacPro 5,1 I thought was an older since its a built in card I can't update it, so that means I would need a separate NIC card for the Macpro?

I don't know why Apple bothers to publish specifications, reading them is apparently beneath everyone.

Mac Pro (Mid 2010) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support

support.apple.com

iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support

support.apple.com

Oh, wait... I'm sure it's that Apple is lying, and neither machine has gigabit ethernet. Right?

 

[paintstone]

MacPro 5,1 has gigabit ethernet.

If you're seeing 100, then somewhere along the chain the flow is getting choked. You can check "about this Mac" on the 2011 iMac and see what the ethernet spec is.

Is there any possibility of a "one time" move of all the data onto one of the machines, say the 5,1, and then only accessing that machine?

Ummm..... maybe but I do need fast access to that machine from an iMac and a MBP. So now I'm digging into a google search of netstat and networking protocol is outside of my sphere, so more studying.

For sake of argument sure, lets do a one-time move but I would need to clean the data, and my deduping algorithm is running into errors so I'm trying to keep things in the order of triage to address.

I'm training a Machine Learning tool and it needs to access the Macpro data which is constantly, so if I am tuning that model remotely I don't know what the process is.

I think my order of operations is like this?

Issue YT-4622
0. clean the data
1. Figure out the issue to transfer data
2. post on forums.macrumors
2a. talking with you
3. debugging deduplicating but
4. figure out network protocol
5. setup MySQL database etc
6. Transfer the data
7. access MySQL remotely via python

 

[paintstone]

I don't know why Apple bothers to publish specifications, reading them is apparently beneath everyone.

Mac Pro (Mid 2010) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support

support.apple.com

iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support

support.apple.com

Oh, wait... I'm sure it's that Apple is lying, and neither machine has gigabit ethernet. Right?

I wouldn't say they are lying its just like drinking from a firehose as I'm usually talking with clients, or business owners, reading TAM sheets, working with the sales team to do stuff, and rarely dig this deep. So having an expert like you help me out is very appreciated.

 

[sfalatko]

I do have file sharing setup, but this is also part of a MySQL setup issue so I can access this network remotely when I am out of town, at a clients office or on vacation. So ethernet is connected but because there is so much data to transfer back and forth multiple times for model training etc, 5TB on one machine, 20TB on another so I was looking for a solution with faster throughput. Ethernet is what 100mbs vs 10 or 20x that on firewire?

Both of your Macs support gigabit ethernet. From the Apple support page it looks like you can us an Ethernet cable to link them directly to transfer the data. If you need this to be more "permanent" then they could be connected to a router that supports gigabit ethernet.