Migration Assistant is the easiest way of life to transplant the heart and individual of one Mac to another . While it used to be tenuous and frequently break down or demand multiple attempts , I ’ve found it more and more reliable in recent year . I ’ve used it a few times in the last few months , and it function with near flawlessness .
Migration Assistant has improve on the turn of room it lets you tie two Macs , and has become better at using the degraded method of connexion . On new Macs , the best elbow room will always be bolt of lightning - to - Thunderbolt . This requires a Thunderbolt data cable . For middling worse but not atrocious performance , you could instead use a USB 3.1 or 3.2 cable with USB Type - A or USB - coulomb on both ends . ( See this guideto determining what kind of USB - one C - tip cable you have if you ’re not sure . )
If you have an ethernet larboard on both gimmick , you may touch base a received ethernet cable , but that will only deliver 1Gbps compared to the potential 10 to 40Gbps of USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt 3 .
After going throughthe initial steps on each Macof launching Migration Assistant and validating one Mac to the other and beginning the transfer of training , Migration Assistant display the web choose on the machine that ’s copying as “ Current connecter ” near the bottom of the silver screen .
If that ’s not the method you favour , or you desire more info , you’re able to click the Connection Details link at the depleted - correct corner . This brings up a dialog that shows the performance of all useable methods . In the figure of speech , I was migrating my wife ’s data point from one laptop to another ; Thunderbolt 3 correctly kicked in using a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 3 cable .
Migration Assistant ’s reported hurrying of 192MBps ( 1.5 Gbps ) not only seemed phenomenal , but the carry-over of hundreds of gigabytes remove about 30 minutes .
macOS reported the other two available methods as poor , showing a jaundiced dot to their right hand rather of a unripe one , as next to the Thunderbolt first appearance at the top . A peer - to - peer mesh , which take a special direct Wi - Fi fashion between the two Macs , would have been over ten times slower . That was mythic compared to the very low data rate of 1MBps ( 8 Mbps ) reported over Wi - Fi , likely because one or both car were plug in to a distant Wi - Fi gateway instead of the one just a few feet away .
If you do n’t like method prefer , you could cancel the migration and test cables , change the Wi - Fi connection in the setup stage , or purchase a newfangled cable to pelt along things up .
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