Target Mode: Turn your Mac into a FireWire Drive
This is one of those cool Mac tricks that you tend to not hear about until you actually need it, and then its a lifesaver. I learned about “target mode”, a feature of all but the oldest Macs that turns your computer into the world’s most expensive external FireWire drive.
I needed this the other day when moving files between my old PowerMac and new Intel iMac. FireWire is 4X faster than ethernet, but you lose a bit if you have to copy from computer A to an external drive, then connect the drive to computer B and copy it back. Enter “target mode”. How to use target mode:
- Shutdown the computer that you want to copy to (the target)
- Connect the source computer to the target computer via FireWire cable
- While holding down “t” on the keyboard (t for target of course) power on the target computer
After a few moments, the FireWire logo will dance around the screen and you should see the target computer appear on the source computer’s desktop. It will look like any other external FireWire drive. Drag and drop! When you are done, “eject” the target computer, then power it down.
Elegant, simple, but amazingly useful. How very Apple.
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