Two Gigabit-capable Macs connected via Cat6 cable, only getting 12-20MB/s?

[AVR2]

I'm using Migration Assistant to transfer from my trusty 2009 Mac mini to a 2019 MacBook Pro, using a Cat6 cable and a Gigabit Ethernet adapter for the MBP.

The reported transfer speed varies from 12-20MB/s.

Is this expected, or is there something I could have done before beginning the transfer to speed it up?

 

[guzhogi]

Not 100%, but may be related to the Mini's hard drive. HDDs tend to be fairly slow compared to SSDs.

 

[techwarrior]

Do you mean Mb/s? Network speeds are typically stated in Megabits/s.

The HDD will be the bottleneck in this operation. The network speed will be no greater than the speed the data can be retrieved from the old Mac.

 

[AVR2]

Not 100%, but may be related to the Mini's hard drive. HDDs tend to be fairly slow compared to SSDs.

The mini's actually got an SSD running at 3Gbps.

Do you mean Mb/s? Network speeds are typically stated in Megabits/s.

I'm just quoting what the MBP was displaying on screen. It reported the transfer speed as "XX MB/s".

Thanks for the insight; the transfer's completed now, but it's useful to know that I couldn't actually have done anything to speed it up.

 

[mmomega]

Many factors could come in to play.

If both machines are wifi capable and ethernet capable and aren't set to choose ethernet, then they could be actually transferring over wifi unless wifi is explicitly disabled.

The ethernet cable can limit transfer.

The adapter type.

The type of files. Fast transfers don't typically happen until you have a single large file. Like a single multi-gigaBYTE file. Many smaller files will transfer at slow speeds.

Also there is a "1,000" number difference between Mb and MB. Megabit little b, and MegaByte big B.
Gigabit is maximum 100-120 MegaBytes per second.
Or Gigabit is 1,200Megabit per second, 120MegaBytes per second.

The little b confuses most non-nerds. I use the term very lovingly.

Many folks see gig internet and inherently think GigaBYTE just because so many plans, such as cellular plans discuss GigaByte in relation to data size but in terms of speed transfer they use bits. Very confusing to most consumers.