Long FireWire Cables
27/08/10 Filed in: Hardware
How are you? Well I hope. I have a couple of questions is you can help me.
1) I have bought the large external hard drives to back up my desktop computer. How do I do it? I forgot all those instructions you gave me...sorry.
2) How do I hook up and transfer info from my apple laptop to the apple desktop? I bought a firewire cord the salesman recommended; however, when I hook it up between the 2 computers, neither the laptop or the desktop recognize the other and thus I do not know how to transfer, for example, a large video file movie I made on the laptop to the desktop so I can edit it.
Please help,
___________
1. You can use Time Machine (built in to your mac’s system preferences) to back up your data. Go to system preferences, select “time machine” and then turn on the feature. Next, select the disk that is already connected to your computer via whatever cable came with the drive. USB or firewire. It won’t matter. If the drive was originally formatted for windows then Time Machine will ask permission to erase the drive. If you have just bought the drive then there should be nothing on it you care about losing so go ahead and say ok. That’s all you should have to do. Time Machine is a wonderful feature of the operating system. But it’s only available on 10.5 Leopard and higher.
2. The salesman who recommended you buy the firewire cable was probably pushing you toward putting one of your drives into target disk mode. While it’s very easy to network macs in your home, sometimes you have a really big file like a video that you’d like to move from one computer to the other as fast as possible. Wireless is ok but too slow for large files. So here’s what you’ll do:
Turn off one of the computers and restart the computer holding down the T key. You’ll see a weird symbol floating around on the computer screen now. Next, connect both computers with the firewire cable. Hopefully both computers have firewire. Older macbooks do not have Firewire. That feature was exclusive to macbook pros. Now you’ll see on the computer that is powered on normally, a hard drive icon on your desktop representing the computer in target disk mode. Now just navigate to the file from that drive and drag and drop the file to your booted mac and you’re done. Turn off the target disk computer using the power button, disconnect the FW cable and turn it back on normally. Finished.
FW is fast enough that it makes the extra steps worth it.
1) I have bought the large external hard drives to back up my desktop computer. How do I do it? I forgot all those instructions you gave me...sorry.
2) How do I hook up and transfer info from my apple laptop to the apple desktop? I bought a firewire cord the salesman recommended; however, when I hook it up between the 2 computers, neither the laptop or the desktop recognize the other and thus I do not know how to transfer, for example, a large video file movie I made on the laptop to the desktop so I can edit it.
Please help,
___________
1. You can use Time Machine (built in to your mac’s system preferences) to back up your data. Go to system preferences, select “time machine” and then turn on the feature. Next, select the disk that is already connected to your computer via whatever cable came with the drive. USB or firewire. It won’t matter. If the drive was originally formatted for windows then Time Machine will ask permission to erase the drive. If you have just bought the drive then there should be nothing on it you care about losing so go ahead and say ok. That’s all you should have to do. Time Machine is a wonderful feature of the operating system. But it’s only available on 10.5 Leopard and higher.
2. The salesman who recommended you buy the firewire cable was probably pushing you toward putting one of your drives into target disk mode. While it’s very easy to network macs in your home, sometimes you have a really big file like a video that you’d like to move from one computer to the other as fast as possible. Wireless is ok but too slow for large files. So here’s what you’ll do:
Turn off one of the computers and restart the computer holding down the T key. You’ll see a weird symbol floating around on the computer screen now. Next, connect both computers with the firewire cable. Hopefully both computers have firewire. Older macbooks do not have Firewire. That feature was exclusive to macbook pros. Now you’ll see on the computer that is powered on normally, a hard drive icon on your desktop representing the computer in target disk mode. Now just navigate to the file from that drive and drag and drop the file to your booted mac and you’re done. Turn off the target disk computer using the power button, disconnect the FW cable and turn it back on normally. Finished.
FW is fast enough that it makes the extra steps worth it.
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