Replacing my computer

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been thinking for a couple of years that I should maybe replace my primary computer soon, but it looks like now my hand is forced. It’s no longer booting up. I think it was a hard drive crash: The (almost) last thing it did was making some weird grinding noises.

It’s a Mac, because I like Macs. I like having an underlying Unix system when I need it, but with a friendly user interface for when I don’t want to futz around with it, and on which most software runs natively with no fuss. So I’ll probably replace it with another Mac. On the other hand, given that this computer was positively ancient (2006, I think, though I can’t double-check without booting it up again) and I was only just starting to feel that it’s underperforming, I clearly don’t need the top of the line.

Looking online, it looks like the cheapest options for a new Mac are a Mac Mini for $600, or a Macbook Air for $1000. I’d have to buy an external monitor for the Mini, but that’ll be much less than $400, and probably a fair bit larger. And the Mini seems to have equal or better stats across the board, compared to the Macbook Air. The only point in favor of the laptop is that, well, it’s a laptop, but basically all of my usage is sitting in front of my desk, anyway. Is there anything else I’m missing, there?

It looks like everything now uses solid-state drives. Is that about right? Last I checked, they were still significantly more expensive and somewhat smaller than magnetic discs, but that was a few years ago. And a solid-state drive should be more reliable, right?

Also, while most of the data I’d care about is either on my external drive or in some cloud or another, there are a few things I’d like to recover from the old computer, if possible. For instance, the text file that has most of my passwords in it. Or, heck, the entire contents of my home directory. I did manage to get it to boot up once yesterday, after the crash, but didn’t have the presence of mind then to copy over the key files. Is there any way, any more, to hook up an old Mac to a new one, and start it up in target mode, to read the disk? I realize that, if it actually was a hard drive crash, some data will be just plain lost (I have nothing on there that’s worth the cost of forensic recovery services), but if I can even salvage some, that might be good (and I might get lucky and the salvageable portion might include all of the stuff I want).

2

Yes.
(To pretty much everything).

To start in Target Disk mode, hold the “T” key down when restarting the old machine. You will need some type of adapter to connect your new machine to the old one. The best would be USB-C to Thunderbolt 1, but that ends up being two expensive adaptors and an expensive cable. The cheapest way might be USB-C to Ethernet, since that’s only one moderately - priced adaptor and a cheap cable.

I do this sort of thing all the time, so you can PM me, or post back with specific questions.

ETA: whatever machine you get, pick the amount of internal drive storage and RAM that you are likely to need for the new decade, since they are not upgradeable. You can buy fast external storage by getting a commodity NVME “stick” and putting it in a USB-C enclosure. That ends up being the best bang for the buck.

Also, if your machine is as old as you say, I would guess that a lot of your software is still 32bit, which you will find out the hard way that it won’t run, so you need to start thinking about what upgrades are necessary.

3

Well, what I use most often is a web browser. And anything else, I’d probably have to download from somewhere (even if I can find a few files unscathed, it probably won’t be entire apps). In either case, if I can get it at all, it’d probably be a new version that would run on the new machine. And there will also be some things that didn’t run on the old machine but which will on the new.

OK, the last time I did this successfully, that only worked with Firewire, and between the recently-departed machine and the previous one, they changed the shape of Firewire plugs, so I couldn’t actually do it then, either. It’s good to know that it’s now more flexible in what kind of port is used. Does it matter which end is which? The old computer has USB-A, some sort of Firewire, and Ethernet, but not USB-C.

4

There are Thunderbolt to Firewire adapters, but they are awfully expensive for one-time use.
Your old machine should have Thunderbolt 1 - it’s marked on the Mini-Displayport connector, with a tiny lightning bolt. That would be the fastest, but requires another pricy adapter (Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 1) plus a Thunderbolt 1 cable. I think the best bet is USB-C to Ethernet.

If your old machine could boot and join a WiFi network, you could do it that way, but in my experience, that’s glacially slow. And, the machine has to me working enough to do it.

Also, you can physically remove the drive from the old machine, and get a cheap USB-C to SATA adapter and connect it directly to the new machine. It’s pretty easy to do, and if the old machine is trash anyways, you don’t have to worry about putting it back together.

e.g.:
https://www.amazon.com/FEMORO-Converter-External-Thunderbolt-Compatible/dp/B0BKG5JLV2/

5

If USB-C to Ethernet is possible, is Ethernet to Ethernet not? That seems very weird if so. I’d have expected that, if the host is using Ethernet output, it would be establishing some sort of network connection with the client.

6

Apple laptops don’t have built-in Ethernet. Minis might, but I don’t check. But, they all have USB-C.

ETA- I just checked, and Minis do have Ethernet.

7

Ah. I checked Minis, but didn’t check laptops.

8

If cost is important to you, check out Apple’s refurbished store page where you can get both current and older Macs at discounts.
As examples, right now they have:
$509 for a current M2 Mac mini.
$759 for a 2020 M1 MacBook Air

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a nearly 4-year old computer just to save $250, but if you really are price conscious, there you go. Plus, even a 2020 M1 will blow the doors off of even the last of the Intel Macs, let alone your 2006.

9

That might be true of current laptops. It’s probably too wide to fit in the super-thin form factor that Apple likes. But the actual laptop in question is, as previously mentioned, very old, and does in fact have Ethernet, and does not have any USB other than A.

10

Yes, of course.
Which is why I mentioned Ethernet as a transfer possibility.

You might need the adapter for the new machine.

11

Ah, gotcha. Well, if I go with the Mini (which looks probable), then I’d have ethernet on both ends, and I’m sure I have a few spare cables lying around, so it wouldn’t cost me anything to try.

12

Correct.

But… Ethernet won’t support Target Disk mode, so the old machine needs to be alive enough to run Migration assistant.

I’m thinking that the best way is to just yank the drive out of the old machine.

13

Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying before. Yeah, if I could get the old machine alive enough, I’d just need to move a few things (like, my text file of passwords) over onto a USB-connected drive. I can do that before I even get the new machine. The Target Disk option is just on the chance that there’s still anything on the drive that’s still slightly alive, and that I’d be able to at least access a little bit without having to actually boot completely up.

14

I remember doing this at least once with firewire, remember that? :smile:

15

Just thought I’d pop in here to update.

Good news: My new computer (a Mac Mini) arrived yesterday.

Good news: I only had to pay $12 for an adapter and cable at Staples to let me hook up a monitor I had lying around to it, and didn’t need a new monitor. Thank you, nice tech guy at Staples.

Bad news: It looks like one of the adaptors I’d need to attempt target mode isn’t even available any more.

Slightly annoying news: Since I couldn’t use the Migration Assistant, I have to re-set all of my odd little settings (getting the mousewheel to scroll in the direction it’s rolled instead of the opposite, the hot corners I had, etc.). The kicker is the “etc.”, because there are probably a few dozen of those that I won’t remember until I try to use something and it doesn’t work right.

Good news: I hooked up my old external hard drive, and it appears to be fully intact.

Excellent news: Huh, what’s this folder on the external HD called “Backup.backupdb” ? It looks like I have everything right up to the day before the crash. So I don’t even need the target mode thing, and I can skip ahead straight to the part where I recycle the old machine.

16

I wouldn’t do the recycle thing until you have used your new machine for several weeks, and are sure you have everything you need off of the old one.

17

Well, as of right now, I can’t get anything off of the old one. I might be able to, if I buy a hard drive enclosure and take it apart to extract the drive… but that’ll take at least the time it takes the enclosure to arrive, plus whatever the cost is of the enclosure, and I have no guarantee it’ll work. And meanwhile I do have everything, or close enough to it that I don’t care about the difference, from the backup I didn’t know I had. Worst case scenario, the new machine suffers a left-side-of-the-bathtub failure, in which case I trade it in under warrantee, get a new one, and copy everything onto THAT one from the external backup.

18

Thanks for this thread! I’ve been contemplating moving from my 2017 iMac (27") to a Mac Mini. My 500 GB SSHD keeps getting low on room and I keep paring down my files in response, but there’s nothing else wrong with it. I’m also toying with adding external drives as an alternative. I suppose I could go for years more without really needing to replace this 7 year old iMac.
My biggest computer opinion is that loads of monitor space is wonderful – I have two 4K monitors straddling the main screen – but it’s a minor pain that the heights don’t match so dragging windows requires extra fiddling. I think a Mac Mini with 3 or 4 identical monitors would be dreamy. Of course that means much more $$$ for monitors than for the computer itself.

Aaaaanyhoo, I’m enjoying this thread, and am curious what other conversation happens here. Thanks for all the great information!

19

I’m setting a a “remote office” in our summer house.
I’m used to using a MacBook Pro M1 with 2x 27" 3840x2160 monitors, but I don’t want to have to take them off their mounts and lug them out there, so I looked around for a good substitute, and I found this monitor, which I tested briefly, before boxing it back up. It looks really promising, and the price is right:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PGL2WVS/
I’m going to start with one, and use the MacBook monitor as the other one, for now.