Tech question - Target Disk Mode

Imaging a machine in TDM is MUCH Faster than using Migration Assistant. It takes our department 15 to 20 minutes to reimage a machine in TDM and an hour or more to use Migration Assistant.

We are working with dozens of MacBooks at a time. If I have to use Migration Assistant, we will need to hire another two technicans to get the same amount of work done. That's not going to happen.

Lack of Target Disk Mode is a huge problem for me. I use it to keep my machines synced. I have a laptop and a desktop, and I attach the former to the latter via TDM on a regular basis to keep the two machines synced using the software "File Synchronization".

Anyone know of a workaround?

I will start a separate thread to see if there are other options.

Charles Dyer wrote:
What it's going to end up being about is Apple losing sales, 'cause some of us _must have_ FireWire and can't afford MacBook Pros.

Exactly. I was gonna get the wife one, well no FW on the Macbook and express card to even add it? They lost that sale from me anyway. Big deal I am not going to destroy sales targets but this was a BIG decision maker for me.

Bill Spears wrote:
I agree the presence of FW can be a distinct advantage. My 4.5 yr old iBook had some wake-up problems recently which required rescue of the journal by starting it up in target disk mode and attaching it to another iBook to run Disk Warrior to recover the file structure. I would have been a dead fish in the water without firewire. You can't rely on wireless or even ethernet transfer working under those conditions. OK it's normally a near end of life issue, but it's a decider for me. I guess Apple knows that and want me to pay $400 more. I guess it is money well spent, but I would have liked the smaller form factor of the macbook.

Thanks for the mutual agreement on this. What a joke this is. Even the prior versions have it...

ArG!

Kane David wrote:
I don't see too many issues with not having Firewire/TDM on the new Macbooks...

If you're wanting Firewire so that you can connect a camcorder, then a new Macbook is probably not the computer for you anyway. If you're a high end user (aka - Final Cut user) then you probably should be using a Macbook Pro which does have Firewire. If you're an educational user, you're probably in the market for the cheapest model Macbook in which case you should get the White Macbook.

If you're using Firewire so that you can rescue data from a broken new Macbook, then the hard disks are very easily removed from these and put into either another new Macbook/Macbook Pro, or into an external SATA 2.5" case with whatever interface(s) you might want.

If you're using it simply as a one off to migrate data from another computer, then you can use the migration assistant over a network.

The ONLY issues I really see are:
1) Migrating over a network is slower though if both Macs had gigabit, then in theory, a crossover network cable is quicker than FW400
2) The Migration assistant when run from the finder lacks the ability to migrate from an attached USB drive, only a FW drive. This is annoying if you say put the HD from the old Mac into an external case with USB for example
3) The Migration assistant from what I can see can only import data from an old Mac over the network if it is running Leopard. I can't see anywhere that the Tiger Migration assistant allows migrating over a network... maybe it does?

You have to remember that Apple isn't going to be able to support all technologies forever... If given a choice, I'd rate the new Macbooks (and old Macbooks) ease of HD removal a far more important aspect from a troubleshooting perspective than say having a Mac with a FW port and a difficult to remove HD (remember iBooks anyone?)

I would like Apple to either release a downloadable Tiger compatible Migration Assistant to fill the void as per no 3 above. I would have also liked Apple to have put 3 USB ports on the Macbook rather than just the two as I like to have an external keyboard, mouse, time machine backup disk, ipod/iphone. I like to leave the second port on the keyboard for incidental use - digital camera, pendrive, printer etc etc.

I have to disagree. Think of the students backing up and maybe losing the internal drive. That term paper is due and due tomorrow.

What to do?

Plug in your FW backup drive that is bootable and print it from there.

I don't know how many times I have had to save myself via a bootable backup drive.

There are many other scenarios that can be put into play where the FW access can be handy.

I just replaced a Mac TODAY, with another iMac. How great to attach my external FW bootable drive and transfer over 128GB's of info on the fly and be up and running in minimal time.

They could of just left it there. Its awful to just suddenly phase out a feature with no prior warning and let the consumer just eat it.

The internal hard drive on my eMac died about three months ago. I just plugged in the backup drive into the FireWire port and I was back in business. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact clone of the internal drive and update it on a nightly basis, so the only things I lost was stuff changed since the previous night's backup... and I had some of that, as I had a Time Machine backup running on another FireWire drive. I didn't get everything back, but I didn't lose much. And I was up and running in under thirty minutes, including time to dig out all the Time Machine backups. How long would it have taken to be back running if I had only USB? An eMac can't boot from USB! Even if I'd had full backups (probably Time Machine only, there'd be no point cloning the drive if I couldn't boot from the clone...) before I'd be able to do anything I'd have had to open up the eMac and replace the drive. Has anyone else here ever opened up an eMac? Does anyone else know what a God-awful pain it is? I still haven't done it, it was easier to get another FireWire drive and clone to that nightly and continue to run the eMac from the first FW drive. Sometime soon I'll open up the eMac and swap out the drive, and then I'll have a spare FW drive.

No, giving up FireWire is insanity.

Sure it does.

You boot the computer you want to have re-imaged in TDM. You then connect it to another Mac, via Firewire. The hard drive appears on that Mac. You then launch NetRestore, choose the TDM hard drive, choose the image that you want to image the TDM machine with and click Restore. BOOM! 15 to 20 minutes, your machine is done.

Call Apple (800-275-2273). Complain. Wait 6 to 8 months for a design revision.

Pepi,
I sympathize with you. I work for a school District and I manage hundreds of MacBooks and iMacs. In our environment, Firewire and Target Disk Mode is essential to our being able to manage and configure large numbers of machines efficiently.

Without firewire and TDM, our imaging process is going to quadruple in time. The horror, the horror.

Call. Complain. Wait.

800-275-2273

+You use Netboot to install software via ethernet. It requires a server.



+"NetBoot service permits client computers to start up from an operating system image stored on your server and to install software on client computers over the network"+

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.5/en/c0os.html

Charles Dyer wrote:
The internal hard drive on my eMac died about three months ago. I just plugged in the backup drive into the FireWire port and I was back in business. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact clone of the internal drive and update it on a nightly basis, so the only things I lost was stuff changed since the previous night's backup... and I had some of that, as I had a Time Machine backup running on another FireWire drive. I didn't get everything back, but I didn't lose much. And I was up and running in under thirty minutes, including time to dig out all the Time Machine backups. How long would it have taken to be back running if I had only USB? An eMac can't boot from USB! Even if I'd had full backups (probably Time Machine only, there'd be no point cloning the drive if I couldn't boot from the clone...) before I'd be able to do anything I'd have had to open up the eMac and replace the drive. Has anyone else here ever opened up an eMac? Does anyone else know what a God-awful pain it is? I still haven't done it, it was easier to get another FireWire drive and clone to that nightly and continue to run the eMac from the first FW drive. Sometime soon I'll open up the eMac and swap out the drive, and then I'll have a spare FW drive.

No, giving up FireWire is insanity.

What a mistake, its a feature that makes the Mac a Mac...

davezlaptop wrote:
Sure it does.

You boot the computer you want to have re-imaged in TDM. You then connect it to another Mac, via Firewire. The hard drive appears on that Mac. You then launch NetRestore, choose the TDM hard drive, choose the image that you want to image the TDM machine with and click Restore. BOOM! 15 to 20 minutes, your machine is done.

That is right! What happened!!!

This is quite unfortunate. I was really disappointed to see FW go in the first place, but now without TDM. Of course my external HDDs don't even have USB (FW800/FW400 only)

Just to add to my earlier posting. Does anyone know of a workaround not using another machine to access your machine in target mode if the operating system won't start?