How to copy from Vista to OS X on Gigabit network?

I am not familiar with Vista; however, as a starting point, you may find this how-to for XP helpful:

http://joelandfaith.com/computer/mac/mxpfs.html

I'd suggest turning on FTP on the mac and transferring files from the pc to the mac.

Dave, at risk of stating the obvious here, it is easiest for you to turn on file sharing on the PC, and login with the Mac. having not used Vista, I can't give you specifics, but it shouldn't differ much from XP. I'll assume that both computers are on the same network leg. The easiest way for the Mac to see the PC is to open a finder window, then the "Go" menu to "Connect to server". Use the IP address of the PC for server address, and then enter in the login account and password when prompted, and you should get in (if you've configured and turned on sharing propery in Vista). If this doesn't work, a little more config info might be handy.

Since you will go from Win to OS X, you will need to create an account for the Win machine on the Mac. To do this, open the OS X control panel called, oddly enough, "Accounts". You will probably need to authenticate yourself in order to add the account so be sure you know your password.

Click on the plus symbol (+) and fill in a name and password for the account. Do not (!) check "allow user to administer computer".

Once you have done this, go back to the Win machine and try to connect to the Mac. You will be asked for a login (name and password). Use the name and password you created for the machine on the Mac.

Once you have done that, your home directory (on the Mac) should show up on the Win machine. Copy the files to that directory (probably Public or Dropbox).

After that is done, go back to the Mac and look for a directory on your Mac called "Users". You should find a subdirectory called (whatever you named the Win account) and in there you should find the files. You should be able to copy the files from that directory to anyplace on your hard drive.

This probably won't be useful to you, but I have two Macs and created the same account on both (same user name and password). The machines, of course, have different names. When I login to one machine from the other, I have access to the entire hard drive this way, not just the user's home directory. So far, I haven't had any problems with this.

I still believe FTP is the easier way to go. Windows file sharing can be a pain in the butt to get working. Your router may be blocking the windows file sharing ports or packets, as that is not all that uncommon.

To activate FTP, visit System Preferences -> Sharing and then click the FTP Access checkbox. You're all set. Now just FTP from the PC to the Mac and either 'get' or 'put' the files that you want. When connecting via FTP to the Mac, you'll use your mac login and password. Simple as that.

do you have to know the IP address of the Mac when doing it this way, or does the WinXP machine show everything on the network?

Glad you got it working.

This is probably the one area where I wish it were easier to figure out.


edited because the above post got edited.

You need to check your privileges for the SATA drive (select drive, do a Get Info, and check the permissions to make sure they are set to allow access from the account you set up.

For the formatting, extended is fine, though journaled is the default. Journaled adds a little overhead, but is more robust. There is debate about the downside of using journaled. But as a simple drive to store video, it should be fine to use journaled. It mostly is folks who use a drive for digitizing that don't like to use journaling, as it slows down the drive ever so slightly, and adds some overhead for transactions.

Dave, while it is fine to use XP and ftp to push the files to the Mac, I think that as you get more familiar with the two, that you will want to pull the files from XP via the Macs built in file sharing method. I think that you will find people more proficient in Windows advising you to use methods that they are more familiar with, while those of us who are Mac-centric will use Mac methods that we are familiar with. I set up and admin many networks with both OS X and XP, and I find that is easier to just enable file sharing on the PC, and set the directories you want access to, and then get to them through the Mac's file sharing routine. Systems set up this way usually find the operator at the Mac not having to interact with the Windows machine from the screen--only through file sharing. I set it up with an alias, so it is a one-click, enter account and password, and the Windows volume or share point shows up on the Mac deskktop in the familiar Mac Finder window. Then just drag and drop (you can move files both ways, too).

Take your time getting used to the new environment. But I'm sure you will gain an appreciation for the Apple way. Most people do who switch. But as you have already discovered, there are many ways to do things.

I don't think that Firewire's days are too limited yet. It is still a very useful connectivity option. FW800 handles SD very well. It doesn't work at all well with HD (for digitizing). Unfortunately, FW1600 hasn't made it out into the public, as it deosn't even stack up against eSATA very well. As far as displays supporting firewire, I don't really know about that. 20 minutes does seem excessive for a 13GB transfer over gigabit ethernet. How are you doing the transfer? FTP or file sharing? Ftp can be notoriously slow when compared to file sharing protocols. I can do about 13GB in about 20 minutes over my 100base-T network using afp (MacBook to G4 through linksys switch).

Check data transfer speed with something called 'Activity Monitor' in the Utilities folder in Applications, look in the last tab 'Network' and you should see a breakdown in MB/sec--between two of my gigabit Macs that 13GB file would take about 6 minutes...

Then open something called Network Utility to check link speed and status, whether you're configured for 100 or gigabit, etc.

System Preferences > Network > Built-in Ethernet > Ethernet is where you go to reconfigure manually, should that even be necessary.

You should make sure you have at least Cat 5e, preferably Cat 6 cables for gigE. Otherwise, with regular cat 5 (or god forbid you still have a cat 3 cable laying around), you'll get a ton of errors that will kill speed and cause file errors like you see. Though ftp can generate some spurious file errors that are false-positives, depending on the app and server.

The speed issue is probably because your router does not support gigabit ethernet.
The solution is to get a gigabit switch or hub and connect both machines to that and the switch to the router.

It should work transparently.

Carlo

Sounds like something's running at half-duplex; does the d-link have a status page that shows what the ports are currently connected at (as opposed to what they're configured for)? I wouldn't go spend a lot of money on cat-6 unless you have a really long run (it can be expensive), I work for a service provider and cat-5e works just fine 99.99% of the time. That's not to say that you don't have a bad cable here, just that a properly working cat-5 should be able to handle gig speed just fine. Anyway, I think it's a duplex problem, so I'd double/triple check that before spending money on new cables. JMO

This is incorrect. You need cat5e to get gig speeds. Big difference between cat5 and cat5e, with gigE being one of them. Yes cat6 may be a tad more. Trust me, I've layed miles of ethernet cable in my days. Run cat5 and try to push gigE, you'll get errors and it'll crawl. I've seen it over and over, "why is my network crawling" and I do a service call, only to find that someone dug an old cat5 or cat3 cable out and stuck it in the network. Swap it out, and all is well.

yeah, i said 5e earlier -- still think it's a duplex issue, not cabling.