New Mac Book with no firewire port???

tracksleepy · #1 May 8th, 2009, 10:40 PM

Hi,

I was looking into buying a mac book the new alumnin type that apple recently released for high school. And i found out that it doesn't have a firewire port so my question is if i buy the new mac book and someday i know i will need to transfer huge files like an imovie from one mac to the another mac so how would i do this? will Apple release a ethernet to firewire cable that will transfer files? I know you can use migration to transfer settings from another mac to this mac book using a ethernet cable. What will apple do about make a adapter for it or something??? Any help will be appreciated. And when you start that laptop up holding down the t key will it go into target mode or will it just boot normally? Lastly Mac os x leopard requires a firewire port to install leopard on it. I know they clone the hard drive from a huge machine before it gets into the laptop. But when the new operating system mac os x snow leopard is here i am pretty sure it will require a firewire port to install it so will i be able to upgrade it my self at home ?

Thanks

ElDiabloConCaca · #2 May 8th, 2009, 11:58 PM

You can use an ethernet cable to share files between two Mac computers. It will be as fast or faster than Firewire.

You cannot use Firewire Target Disk Mode on the new Macs that lack a Firewire port.

Snow Leopard will be fully compatible with the unibody Macbooks. Leopard does not require a Firewire port in order to install -- I think you're mistaking that with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4). Here are the system requirements for Leopard (and nowhere does it mention requiring a Firewire port):

http://www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs/

Randy Singer · #3 May 9th, 2009, 12:32 AM

For those lamenting the loss of FireWire Target Disk mode (due to a lack of FireWire in the new MacBooks and MacBook Air), this USB product provides a similar means for transferring files at high speed from one computer to another without having to do any configuration or install additional software. It is price competitive with a simple FireWire cable, and...it works both Mac to Mac, and PC to Mac!

Targus High-Speed File Transfer Cable ($40)
http://www.targus.com/us/product_det...sp?sku=ACC96US

Of course, you can use Ethernet to transfer data also, it just isn't quite as easy:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3231

**fryke** · #4 May 9th, 2009, 02:16 AM

Sounds good, although it doesn't solve problems like Migration Assistant and harddrive recovery, since both systems must at least be able to run the application provided with the cable. Sadly, no Swiss distributor has them available. (I'd have liked to order some for our store here...)

Are there other products that work the same way?

ora · #5 May 9th, 2009, 04:00 AM

For recovery, it is so easy to extract the HD from the new unibody macbooks that I would just invest in a 2.5" enclosure to be honest. The HD is just sitting in the same bay as the battery.

This is the best picture i can find:

The drive is on the left and the battery on the right. Removing the battery is easy, there is even a video here - there is only one screw!

For migration i found I could migrate from my time machine backup during the installation [process, and that worked really well for me. I do kinda miss FW800 from my old MBP but the lack of FW400 doesn't seem to be too much of an issue to be honest. That said most of my external equipment has at least fw400 and USB2 connections available.

**fryke** · #6 May 9th, 2009, 05:47 AM

Erh... That's no solution for migrating an iBook G4 with Panther or Tiger to a new MacBook. The solution, currently, is an external harddrive with both USB and Firewire ports. A cable would be more simple.

Randy Singer · #7 May 9th, 2009, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fryke

Sounds good, although it doesn't solve problems like Migration Assistant ...?

Migration Assistant works great over Ethernet if you have a MacBook Air. Or in any case it works great over a wireless network.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2288

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3322

djackmac · #8 May 10th, 2009, 12:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElDiabloConCaca

You can use an ethernet cable to share files between two Mac computers. It will be as fast or faster than Firewire.

1st of all how do you figure that? Firewire-400 @ 400mbps vs. 100Base-T @ 100mbps. Plus the data transfer rates are only as fast as the drive speeds anyhow.

The way we do it at our shop is create a .dmg of the old machine (the ibook in your case) and save it to external HD or whatever. Attach the external HD through USB to the new macbook and mount the .dmg. Fire up migration assistant and point it to the mounted image and transfer away.

If you are really worried about not having firewire and target disk mode maybe you should invest in the cheaper and still available white macbooks.

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tracksleepy (July 15th, 2009)