Use target disk mode to move files to another computer. Help me!

[Poncho]

The solution is just to use that & avoid CCC as you would've lost ability when using the TB cable process.
Have I got this right?

Yes, I could copy the media onto the T5 than unplug and plug it into the iMac and transfer but wanted a direct transfer method and the ability to boot the iMac from the Macbook Pro if possible, as it was so so easy to do back in the old days.

Just a thought though, if you're using the carbon clone on both machines are they both called the same computer name, maybe that's an issue?

Could be the issue. Just as it was in this problem I had a few weeks back. For those of you with spare time on your hands, read this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...on-a-lan.2248884/?post=28748395#post-28748395

 

[McScooby]

Yes, I could copy the media onto the T5 than unplug and plug it into the iMac and transfer but wanted a direct transfer method and the ability to boot the iMac from the Macbook Pro if possible, as it was so so easy to do back in the old days.



Could be the issue. Just as it was in this problem I had a few weeks back. For those of you with spare time on your hands, read this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...on-a-lan.2248884/?post=28748395#post-28748395

I skimmed it, and yeah I've been there before. Remember when setting permissions, you need to click the padlock & enter admin name & password to unlock to get dropdown sharing permissions though! 👍

 

[Poncho]

Here's where I'm at...

Bought an Apple Firewire to Thunderbolt 2 adapter. Connected it to an a old Firewire hard drive and the other end into the Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adaptor. It worked. So I'm assuming the Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adaptor is working fine.

This leaves the Apple Thunderbolt Cable. So I get to go to a friend's house. He has an iMac with a Thunderbolt 2 port. So I am able to connect the Thunderbolt 2 port on my 2015 Macbook Pro Retina directly to the Thunderbolt 2 port on his iMac. Start the 2015 Macbook Pro Retina in Target Disk Mode. Nothing showing on iMac. So maybe it's the cable? Next, with the two Macs still attached with the Thunderbolt 2 cable and the router in the house switched off I launch Migration Assistant on the 2015 Macbook Pro Retina and do the same on my friend's iMac. This time iMac can see the 2015 Macbook Pro Retina. So the cable clearly functions. Shut down both machines and this time start the iMac in Target Disc Mode. Start up the 2015 Macbook Pro Retina and the iMac doesn't appear on the desktop of the 2015 Macbook Pro Retina, or in Disk Utility or Terminal diskutil list.

I give up....

 

[James_C]

Am using OS Sierra on both Macs. In fact, the Macbook Pro is running a Carbon Copy Clone of my iMac. I Carbon Copy Clone a back up of my iMac to a Samsung T5 and then Carbon Copy Clone that to the Macbook Pro. There are reasons for doing this. Work-related. Would like to break free from OS Sierra but can't upgrade because I have to run a specific piece of big software (Adobe CS3) that is not supported on High Sierra and upwards.

Can I just check, when you say both are running Sierra, the 2017 iMac shipped with High Sierra. Is this what is running on the iMac, because if it is runnning Sierra then this may explain why you are having a problem.

 

[Poncho]

Can I just check, when you say both are running Sierra, the 2017 iMac shipped with High Sierra. Is this what is running on the iMac, because if it is runnning Sierra then this may explain why you are having a problem.

The iMac 2017 shipped with Sierra. I know this because I got one of the last machines in the Apple store before they began arriving with High Sierra.
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Is this what is running on the iMac, because if it is runnning Sierra then this may explain why you are having a problem.

Why might running Sierra cause a problem?

 

[James_C]

Ah ok, when I looked up the OS that the 2017 iMac shipped with it said High Sierra, I thought you may have found a way of running an earlier unsupported OS on your machine to give you compatibility with Adobe. Clearly this is not the case and you are running the OS that was shipped with your machine.

 

[McScooby]

Out of curiosity, have you got Filevault turned on?

 

[Poncho]

Out of curiosity, have you got Filevault turned on?

Nope!

 

[Poncho]

Ah ok, when I looked up the OS that the 2017 iMac shipped with it said High Sierra,

Also, both hard drives are formatted as HFS+

 

[McScooby]

Can't think of anything else, I've only used CCC to clone to an external though. I reckon it's probably something to do with system setting configurations mixed up on your 2 machines. Maybe give apple a call & see what they say?

 

[Poncho]

Can't think of anything else, I've only used CCC to clone to an external though. I reckon it's probably something to do with system setting configurations mixed up on your 2 machines. Maybe give apple a call & see what they say?

Agree. I can't think of anything else either. I'll report back if I find the definitive answer as it might help some one else in the future

 

[joevt]

You haven't tried FireWire Target Disk Mode yet - more adapters!

 

[Poncho]

You haven't tried FireWire Target Disk Mode yet - more adapters!

Noooo!!!!

Just one thing left to investigate. Both my machines and my friend's have DriveDX installed. It's a long shot but all machines have SATSMARTDriver v0.8 installed by this app. I once had an external hard drive that would only appear on an old 2013 Mac and wouldn't mount on my current 2017 iMac, or even show up anywhere. In desperation I looked in Console to see what happened when I connected the external HD to my iMac and saw the message 'SATSMARTDriver v0.8: disk is not SAT capable'. I chucked SATSMARTDriver v0.8 in the trash and deleted it, rebooted the iMac and the external hard drive mounted. Worth a shot, though I think I have had enough of fiddling with dongles for a few days

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

I provided you "the solution" in post 4 earlier in the thread.
Do it "my way" and I guarantee 100% success....

 

[Boyd01]

Would like to break free from OS Sierra but can't upgrade because I have to run a specific piece of big software (Adobe CS3) that is not supported on High Sierra and upwards.

A bit OT, but since you mention it... I was also running Sierra until two months ago when I moved everything to a new Mini running Catalina. I have over $3000 in legacy software that won't work in Catalina (some of it doesn't even work in Sierra). My solution was to use Parallels to create Sierra and Mountain Lion virtual machines. These work far better than I would have imagined, and the new Mini actually runs all the software faster in the VM than my old Macs did natively.

Actually, in the case of CS3 (which I was also using under Sierra), all I need is Photoshop. I'm sure it would run fine in the VM, but decided to sign up for the Adobe Photography Bundle instead so I could finally get a new version.

 

[Poncho]

A bit OT, but since you mention it... I was also running Sierra until two months ago when I moved everything to a new Mini running Catalina. I have over $3000 in legacy software that won't work in Catalina (some of it doesn't even work in Sierra). My solution was to use Parallels to create Sierra and Mountain Lion virtual machines. These work far better than I would have imagined, and the new Mini actually runs all the software faster in the VM than my old Macs did natively.

Actually, in the case of CS3 (which I was also using under Sierra), all I need is Photoshop. I'm sure it would run fine in the VM, but decided to sign up for the Adobe Photography Bundle instead so I could finally get a new version.

Good info! How much RAM do you have? I discussed running a VM with an Apple person but they said Parallels was RAM intensive and that 16GB would be a minimum (I have 16GB). Phosotoshop CS3 works under HiGH Sierra but InDesign doesn't. This is the crucial app. And the client I have uses this. He sees no reason to pay and upgrade.

As an experiment I might install the latest Mac OSX (don't even know what it is I'm so out of the loop) onto a separate SSD and then try a trial of Parallels (if one exists) and then create a Sierra VM.

 

[Poncho]

I provided you "the solution" in post 4 earlier in the thread.
Do it "my way" and I guarantee 100% success....

Thanks. I know your solution will enable me to move one heap of data from one Mac to the other. I just wonder why I have dropped a heap of cash on cables and dongles that don't appear to do what Apple says they will.

 

[Poncho]

OK, STOP THE PRESS! It's just worked. But not in the way I expected. Just thought I'd do it all again and see if anything came up in the Console that might alert me to what was going wrong. So I connected the 2015 Macbook Pro to the iMac with the Thunderbolt 2 cable going through the Thunderbolt 3 to 2 Adapter (as before) and booted the iMac. I was hoping to see the Macbook Pro's HD icon on the desktop of the iMac. But no. The iMac has booted as if it were the Macbook Pro. That is, it has chosen the Macbook Pro to boot from.

So what's going on? Did you change anything this time, I hear you ask. Well, yes I did. I shall tell you what it is after I eliminate it from the series of steps just to make sure...

But also, I don't know why the imac has booted from the Macbook pro. I didn't hold down the alt key

 

[Poncho]

OK, it's all working as expected except for the fact that if I don't hold down the alt key when booting the iMac it boots using the Hard drive of the Macbook Pro (it seems to have precedence for some reason). If I boot the iMac and hold the alt key I get the choice of Macboook pro and iMac HDs. If I choose the imac HD it boots as normally and the HD of the Macbook Pro appears on the desktop. Now, the one thing I changed, which wasn't the case in all scenarios/attempts before was that this time I had the Macbook pro plugged into power source. I was running from the battery all the other times. However, running the Macbook Pro back on only the battery now makes no difference and everything still works OK. It's as if having the Macbook Pro connected to power gave a kick up the Thunderbolt port's jacksee and now it has woken up and remembers what to do. Let's see how long it remembers...

 

[casperes1996]

OK, it's all working as expected except for the fact that if I don't hold down the alt key when booting the iMac it boots using the Hard drive of the Macbook Pro (it seems to have precedence for some reason). If I boot the iMac and hold the alt key I get the choice of Macboook pro and iMac HDs. If I choose the imac HD it boots as normally and the HD of the Macbook Pro appears on the desktop. Now, the one thing I changed, which wasn't the case in all scenarios/attempts before was that this time I had the Macbook pro plugged into power source. I was running from the battery all the other times. However, running the Macbook Pro back on only the battery now makes no difference and everything still works OK. It's as if having the Macbook Pro connected to power gave a kick up the Thunderbolt port's jacksee and now it has woken up and remembers what to do. Let's see how long it remembers...

That’s extremely weird, but happy it’s finally working for you

 

[joevt]

I know you have to have MacBook Pro connected to power to do clamshell mode. I didn't think it was necessary for Thunderbolt target disk mode.

My MacBook Pro (15 inch Retina, 2015) allows Target Disk Mode when power is disconnected. The Thunderbolt icon dances on the screen. There's also a battery charge icon. If I then connect a FireWire adapter, the Thunderbolt icon has a FireWire icon partner. If I connect the MacBook Pro to a Mac mini 2018 via Thunderbolt, then the FireWire icon disappears and a "Macintosh" device appears in System Information.app with Services: "Target Disk Mode" and a list of disks and their partitions under that. These disks appear in the Finder. If I disconnect the Thunderbolt cable, the FireWire icon appears again next to the Thunderbolt icon.

It appears I was wrong about other disks appearing in Target Disk Mode. I could not get any USB or FireWire disks connected to the MacBook Pro to appear via Target Disk mode on the Mac mini. I didn't try Thunderbolt connected drives though.

 

[Boyd01]

Good info! How much RAM do you have? I discussed running a VM with an Apple person but they said Parallels was RAM intensive and that 16GB would be a minimum (I have 16GB).

I am using a 4gb virtual machine because the old Macs that I used with the legacy software only had 4gb, and 32-bit apps can only access a total of 4gb. Looks like this results in 4-5 gb of RAM usage when the VM is running, so I suspect it will work unless you are running a bunch of other programs. I maxxed out my new Mini with 64gb since I knew I would be using VM's a lot (also running Windows 10).

There is a free trial of Parallels, but it is hard to find on their website, try doing a google search. They keep changing things, I purchased the pro version which is a yearly subscription, but they also had a standalone one-time purchase that was cheaper but limited to a max of 4gb and 2 core vm's and does not include updates when a new version is released. Now, it seems as though they are offering a cheaper subscription as an alternative to the standalone version which includes free updates. So, I'm a bit confused by what is going on there.