Connecting Two Macs Together with FireWire
Finder, FireWire, Intermediate, Mac OS X | February 22nd, 2009
If your like me, at some point, you’ve needed to connect your Mac to another to transfer some files. Most would think to do this with networking, which is a perfectly fine way to go about it, but FireWire can be far, far quicker.
In this quick tutorial you will need two Macs and a FireWire cable.
First, connect your two Macs together with the FireWire cable. All Macs, excluding the new MacBook Air and Macs older than the iBook, have at least one FireWire port. If you are unsure, check your ports on the back or side of your computer looking for the FireWire symbol (See the icon above).
Once you have the FireWire cable connected to both computers, restart or startup the computer you would like to gather data from and hold the “T” button on its keyboard. After no longer than 15 seconds you should see a FireWire symbol bouncing around the screen and an external hard drive icon (like the one icon above) on the other Macs desktop should pop up. You can now navigate through the files as if it were an external hard drive.
Pretty cool, eh? And much faster then trying to network them together.
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Alyssa
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:51 pmGood for people to know.
Cindy
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:57 amAfter connecting the 2 macs, is there a way that they can then share a keyboard? I’m using a G5 as source, and G4 as target because the G4 is sickly. All is fine except at every start-up I have to move the USB keyboard cable over to the G4 to start it up as target, then move it back to the G5 that I use for everything. Sort of a pain…
Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
admin
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:22 amCindy, the only way you could share the same keyboard/mouse would be with a device called a KVM switch. It’s a device that allows you to toggle your keyboard/mouse. However, this will cost you at least $40 and if any drivers need to be installed to use the device, it may become pointless. Your other option is to find another keyboard.
Sajjad K
August 5th, 2009 at 1:15 amActually, Cindy, you can use this same trick, with a bit of modification, to use another computer’s screen, keyboard, and mouse. This is particularly useful if you, like me, have a 24″ iMac, and want to use it as an external display. Now, while using the iMac’s screen as a secondary screen is impossible, as of now, it is possible to use it as it’s sole monitor.
This is what you do:
Follow the instructions above to connect the two computers.
Put the computer you wish to have on the other computer into Target Disk Mode.
On the computer you wish to use as a display/keyboard/mouse, go to System Preferences->Start-up Disk.
Select your computer’s drive, which should appear there.
And then restart and voilà!
Remember, it will be slower than normal, though, because you are using FireWire, which is 400 Mbs compared to IDE, which is 3.5 Gbs.
= )
Kitty
September 28th, 2009 at 12:49 pmThis is really useful, thanks. I have two questions though:
1. Is there a correct procedure for closing down after the transfer of files?
2. One of my macs doesn’t read dvds, the other (an older G4 I don’t use any more) does. I want to install 10.4 on my regular mac and want to use the other one to do this, whilst not upgrading on this particular mac - not enough space anyway. Is this possible? Many thanks, Kitty
admin
September 28th, 2009 at 1:05 pmTo answer your questions:
1) The only procedure you should follow is to eject your firewire mounted computer before restarting it or disconnecting it. As long as you aren’t transferring data there won’t be any issues, but this is still a precaution you should take.
2) As always backup any major data before upgrading. Connect the computer with the working DVD drive and restart it holding T. You can now use this computer as a DVD drive to perform your 10.4 install.
Tom
October 16th, 2009 at 8:06 pmIs it possible to do this when the FIrewire ports are different? Is there a cable for that setup? I have an iBook and an older MacBook, both of which only have Firewire 400 ports and the new MacBookPro only has a Firewire 800 port.
admin
October 16th, 2009 at 10:11 pmYes, it’s the same process. Whether it is 800 or 400 doesn’t matter.