Speed: Because you’re connecting one Mac directly to another using Thunderbolt, you’ll get the fastest transfer speeds available.Putting a Mac into Target Disk Mode is particularly simple on Intel-based Macs, but it’s also easy on Macs with Apple silicon. There’s no software to configure nor any permissions to worry about. Easy setup: Because Apple has baked Target Disk Mode into the Mac firmware, the version of macOS is irrelevant beyond the Thunderbolt cable requirement discussed below.That’s true of both Intel-based Macs and Macs with Apple silicon. Nearly universal: Every Mac sold in the last decade supports Target Disk Mode, so you can be sure it will work with any modern Mac.Target Disk Mode is nearly universal, easy to set up, and one of the fastest methods of moving files between Macs. Target Disk Mode is a special boot mode for Intel-based Macs and an option in macOS Recovery on Macs with Apple silicon that enables one Mac to behave like an external drive for another Mac. You may even be able to use Target Disk Mode on an older Mac to transfer an account with Migration Assistant when setting up a new Mac. To cut the copy time in half, try Target Disk Mode instead. If you had an external drive with sufficient free space handy, you could copy all the data to it from one Mac and then copy the data from it to another Mac. You can send files via AirDrop, attach them to an email message, put them in a Messages conversation, turn on and connect via File Sharing, or use a file-sharing service like iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or Google Drive as an intermediary, to name just a few of the more obvious approaches.īut what if you have a lot of data-say tens or even hundreds of gigabytes-to transfer from one Mac to another? The techniques listed above might work, but we wouldn’t bet on it. Apple makes it easy to move data between Macs.

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