If you’re running Mac OS X newer than 10.6.8 then you should be fine.įor this purpose we use a standard Thunderbolt cable, which we connect on the Thunderbolt port of each of the two Mac’s.

Just make sure both Mac’s are up-to-date with their OS X and firmware updates. Both Mac’s need to run at least Mac OS X 10.6.8.One standard Thunderbolt cable (find them at the Apple Store or at Amazon).2 Mac’s with a Thunderbolt connector (typically a model from 2011 or newer).So in this article I’m going to show you, how to use a Thunderbolt cable, to transfer files very fast from one Mac to another. It is said that the theoretical speed of Thunderbolt is up to 10 Gbit/sec, where as Thunderbolt 2 even goes up to 20 Gbit/sec. Now that Firewire is no longer, give Thunderbolt a try, you’ll be impressed again. If you’ve ever tried using “ Target Disk Mode” or “IP over Firewire”, then I’m sure that you were impressed, at the time, about the achieved transfer speeds. High-Speed Data Transfers between Macs with Thunderbolt In this article, I’ll show you how you can have a very fast data transfer between two Mac’s, using a Thunderbolt cable. Please keep in mind, in case you’re having old Mac’s that have Firewire: this works exactly the same as with FireWire, you’d just use a Firewire cable instead. The firewire trick works under Windows as well (see this old Article). Unfortunately, Firewire has gone out of the graces of Apple and has been replaced with Thunderbolt (and USB 3.x), and the trick to connect 2 Mac to each other over a Firewire cable have been lost and forgotten. This did not only help us in sharing files between 2 Mac’s, it even allowed you to boot one Mac from the DVD or CDRom drive on the other Mac, which is great when you have only one Mac with a CD or DVD drive. Back in the day, when Firewire was a standard for any Mac, we could use Firewire to directly connect one Mac to another and transfer files at a very respectable speed – the so called “ Target Disk Mode” or “IP over Firewire”.

Transfer files from mac to mac ethernet