Setting up the Mac mini

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APPLE By Will Fastie Apple has an excellent reputation for helping iPhone users migrate from Android, a process that is smooth, precise, and friendly.
[See the full post at: Setting up the Mac mini]

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fisher75, Sueska, LH, DLivesInTexas, IBM1130, rc primak, TCBeaverton, lmacri, WSalgrinch

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Thanks from a user that was dragged (kicking and screaming) from DOS to windows… back in the day. Didn’t need a GUI, didn’t want one either.
My how things have changed…

The article more or less mirrors my recent addition of a new M4 mini (also with 1TB onboard). But since I was migrating, (have both an old Win10 dell, and an old MacBook Pro) I already had a KVM switch in the mix. And like you, I also had to buy a couple of new cables, to switch a usbA to usbC for connecting to the mini. My old wireless Logitech keyboard, and old Logitech usbA trackball mouse worked (after a similar keyboard identification task) right out of the gate. Some functions on the mouse buttons don’t work on the mini, probably because the mouse trackball are technically no longer supported by Logitech, and no current drivers are available.
I also connected to my gigabit switch with an Ethernet cable, and disabled Wi-Fi on the mini. It found both my network Epson printers and both Buffalo link stations on the network. I later installed buffalo NasNav app to administer them as I did on my win10 Dell. The mini also saw the two usb external hard drives attached to my router (readyshare) with no issues.
In all, hardware setup was pretty painless.  Migrating old software… not so much. Brian will likely have an article on that.

Thanks to ALL of you there for the work you do FOR US mere mortals.

 

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Will Fastie

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Nice post. As it happens, I recently purchased a Mac Mini as well, and found the setup equally straightforward. Some differences:
No KVM for me. I have two Dell Monitors. The Mac Mini HDMI port and the cable I had were, in turned out, underpowered for running my Dell 3008WFP monitor, so I used a USB-C to DisplayPort cable for that one, and connected the HDMI port on the MacMini to the VGA port on my smaller Dell E2020H monitor. I had an Anker hub with both USB-A and USB-C slots. I connected mouse and keyboard to the USB-A slots. The USB-C slot’s use varies between USB-C devices and, with an adapter, a USB-A connection to my printer.
I’m running storage off an external drive. No problems with that. I’m not using Time Machine, preferring to back up “manually”.
The only read surprise was that Foxit PDF Editor couldn’t work out that when I scan multiple different pages through the sheet feeder on my Canon MX472, I’m expecting multiple different pages of scanned output. The Foxit tech support people are working on this. The native Canon scan software worked with no problems.
I liked the sequoia picture too.

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Will Fastie

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rlesser1 wrote:

The Mac Mini HDMI port and the cable I had were, in turned out, underpowered

That’s interesting. What exactly do you mean by “underpowered?” That’s not something I would have expected.

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I use a stand alone PC and an iMac 24″ M1 2021. I am finding this series helpful as I have just blundered along in the past, using some trial and error – not always a good idea. One of my integration issues using two systems on my home network is using a common NAS. I have an old Western Digital MyBookWorld White which constantly disconnects. I only use my PC for old programs that will not run on my Mac. Have tried Parallels and found it very glitchy on my setup, so a standalone PC seemed the better option. That means two keyboards and two mouses and two screens. I use the NAS to backup my personal financial app (Reckon Personal Accounts for desktop) so it’s not really vital. Mostly just annoying with resetting often provoking ‘not found’ issues.

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After 20 years running Windows I bought a new Mac Mini.  The setup was wonderful !

I have 1 GB of photography files on an external hard drive that was connected to my Windows Desktop via SATA cable.  The partition format is NTFS.

I bought a 4 TB OWC SSD connected to the Mini via Thunderbolt port.  I created a 1 TB ExFat partition to move my Windows files to.

I have the Windows external hard drive connected to a USB 3 port on the Mini via a patch cable and dock.  I can see all the files on the Windows hard drive just fine.

But every attempt I make to copy-paste or drag-drop the files to the Mini SSD I get an Error Code 50 failure.

I really expected the NTFS and ExFat formats to be compatible, and the fact that I can see all the files on the Hard Drive confuses me why they won’t copy.

These are my lifetime of photography files and I need them to be available with the high speed interface and M4 chip of the Mini.

I have successfully transferred a smaller set if files from a 2 TB external drive formatted as ExFat but I’m stumped that I can see the NTFS files but not transfer them.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Retired Rocket Scientist

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I use 6-8TB Segate drives.
The screenshot is from my M4Max MacMini. The drive is an 8TB Segate USB external HDD, connected to the MacMini via USB3 -> USB-C adapter.
The bottom shows a screenshot of the drive from Disk Management on a Win10 computer. You can see the formatting there.
I right-click copy/pasted a .txt file and a .jpg pic to the Desktop of the MacMini and opened them in Preview.

 

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DrRon

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Thanks,

The W10 drive is formatted as ExFat.  Mine is NTFS. That might be the difference in successfully copy/paste procedure.

I need to really think more about your post to fully appreciate the setup difference.

Retired Rocket Scientist

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NTFS is read-only on Apple Silicon.
I have been using Paragon NTFS for Mac on NTFS drives on both Intel and ARM Macs to make them read/write. But they don’t have.a version for M4 yet. Just M1-M3.

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DrRon

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BTW, that drive is read/write on both Mac and Win – Intel and ARM. I run Win on ARM in Parallels VMs on Silcon Macs and regular Win in the VMs on Intel Macs.

(Not a Rocket Scientist, just lowly retired IT)

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satrow

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Darn,  is there any other format than ExFat I can use on the SSD to write the NTFS data to it?

Any hardware interface magic?

I desperately want to operate on that gold mine of photography files with that fantastic M4 Mac without having to leave them on that old hard drive which I know will fail sometime in the future.

The only other thought I had was to buy major online storage space and upload them to someplace like Google Photos.

Sigh…wish I was a retired IT guy.

 

Retired Rocket Scientist

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Your pics are not NTFS, they are .png, .bmp, .jpg, etc. They are readable on Windows x86 (Intel), Windows on ARM (ARM-based), macOS, iOS, and Linux. You can see them on phones, tablets, laptops, desktops.

You just need to get them to whatever device you want to see them on. The files are not NTFS. The only problem you have is the drive they are currently on is formatted NTFS.

Check these out. This is the 8TB I have – it came formetted like that, but you don’t need 8TB. Get a small one to transfer the files (says it’s for PC, Mac, etc), then you can reformat the one you have.

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Will Fastie

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PK

Your post gives me hope. If you’ll indulge me I’d like to describe my configuration in some detail and ask for any possible solution available.

• Data Source (not changeable)
  • Gateway external HD, 2 TB, Windows NTFS
  • Interface to Mac – W7 SATA to USB 3A cable through a UGREEN dock, USB 3.0 port to Mac front USB C port
• Data Destination (highly preferred as not changeable)
  • OWC SSD, 4 TB
  • Interface to Mac – Thunderbolt
  • Target for data transfer a 1TB partition formatted as ExFat

Thinking about the PK post, I have several external storage option

• Seagate External Slim HD, 2 TB with USB 3.0 cable interface.  Format is Guid Partition Map.
• The mentioned MOVE SP Flash drive , 1 TB with USB 3.2 and Type C ports.  Format is ExFat but can be changed to Fat 32

I’ve had some luck copy-pasting smaller data sets from the Source to Destination but mostly get the Error Code 50.

This all might not be much value here but it helped me think through the posts above.  All further help would be appreciated…

Retired Rocket Scientist

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See #2757373 below.

 

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DrRon wrote:

But every attempt I make to copy-paste or drag-drop the files to the Mini SSD I get an Error Code 50 failure.

Alleged to be a Mac Finder bug on large transfers:

Copy Files Often Receive error code -50

(Copies from terminal apparently work.)

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DrRon wrote:

I have 1 GB of photography files

Was that a typo? One GB or one TB?

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Will

1 TB is correct.

It’s 20 years of photos!

Thanks for the correction.

Retired Rocket Scientist

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DrRon wrote:

1 TB is correct.

The reason I asked is that I have a dual-head (USB-A/USB-C) 256GB Sandisk thumb drive. It’s interesting because it comes formatted as FAT32, which both the Mac and my Windows PCs can read and write. That’s a quite reasonable amount of space if you’re just moving things back and forth. Not enough for permanent storage, of course.

There is one weird thing that I have not investigated fully but stumbled upon when working with the mini – Windows 11 will only allow me to format thumb drives as FAT32 when the capacity is 32GB or less. If I attempt to format the 256GB stick, I’m offered only exFAT or NTFS. There are larger versions of that Sandisk stick, but I don’t know how they are formatted out of the box.

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I have a Flash Drive by MoveSpeed that I just bought.

It is 1 TB and dual-head USB 3.2 and Type C ports.

The default format is ExFat but they advise it is reformatable to FAT 32.

I am getting desparate to transfer my data off my Windows external hard drive to protect against losing it when that mechanical drive fails.  I just expected to be able to copy-paste to the expensive OWC 4TB SSD plugged into my new MAC Thunderbolt port.  I never expected to have such a challenge with format compatibility.  Hopefully the experts on the forum can solve my problem…

Thanks

Retired Rocket Scientist

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If you still have a Windows computer (if not, a relative or a friend with one) – Plug the dual-head Flash drive (do not reformat it) and the USB external HDD into it. Copy/paste ONE pic from the external HDD to the Flash drive. Unplug the Flash drive and plug it into the Mac. Copy/paste the pic to the Mac.

Did that work? Now try to open the pic you copied to the Mac by double-clicking on it. Did that work?

A piece of information you may need: the maximum file size on FAT32 is 4GB. exFAT does not have that size limitation. How big are your largest photos?

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Will Fastie

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OK, let’s see if I understand.

The data source is and external HD formatted as Windows NTFS.

The data destination is not the Mac itself but an OWC 4 TB SSD interfaced to the Mac via Thunderbolt connection.  The final destination on the SSD is a 1 TB partition formatted as ExFat, so size shouldn’t be an issue.  I have a little less then 1 TB of source data but no significantly large files.

Since the data source is an external HD written by the computer do I really need to get the Windows machine in the loop?

Retired Rocket Scientist

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You said the problem is copy/paste from the NTFS drive to the Mac.
If you can copy/paste from the NTFS drive to the exFat drive using the Mac as “host” that may work. But the question is can you copy/paste from the NTFS drive attached to the Mac.

Try it. You can’t hurt anything. Then copy from exFAT to the Mac. But test with one, or a small number of files, not a wad of them.

 

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DrRon

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For clarity, the Mac is always the middleman is all the transfer activity.

No data is getting transferred to the Mac, but the SSD connected via a Thunderbolt port.

Copy/pasting from the NTFS drive attached to the Mac via the dock is the problem I’ve had from the beginning.

I’ll try copy/paste from the NTFS drive to the Flash Drive formated as ExFat and see if that works.  If it does that will be my second best solution.

Thanks.

Retired Rocket Scientist

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Which is why the suggestion to use a PC as the middleman.

cheers, Paul

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Got it.  But my trusty Windows desktop stopped booting up, even with a repair boot.

Thank God for my new Mac.

I have to decide if it would be worth it to reinstall my Windows OS…

Retired Rocket Scientist

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Use a friend’s PC to test the copy process?

cheers, Paul

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DrRon wrote:

No data is getting transferred to the Mac, but the SSD connected via a Thunderbolt port.

DrRon wrote:

I’ll try copy/paste from the NTFS drive to the Flash Drive formated as ExFat and see if that works. If it does that will be my second best solution.

The file transfer goes through the Mac. Neither the NTFS drive, SSD nor the Flash drive have the ability to transfer files on their own.

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Re. FAT32 drive/partition sizes, MS announced changes ~7 months ago that were being rolled out to Insiders on Windows 11: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-removes-fat32-partition-size-limit-in-windows-11/ I’ve not kept track of progress but I doubt Macs will be up to date yet.

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Will Fastie

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PKCano wrote:

the maximum file size on FAT32 is 4GB.

From Wikipedia: “The built-in Windows shell disk format tool on Windows NT arbitrarily only supports volume sizes up to 32 GB, but Windows supports reading and writing to preexisting larger FAT32 volumes, …”

And: “The maximum FAT32 volume size is 16 TB with a sector size of 4,096 bytes.”

In other words, my 256GB Sandisk double-header came formatted with FAT32, so both Windows and macOS read and write it just fine. It just can’t be formatted beyond 32GB on Windows using the visual tools. Apparently, it can be formatted to larger sizes at the command line.

satrow wrote:

MS announced changes ~7 months ago that were being rolled out to Insiders on Windows 11

I don’t have an insider’s build, so I can’t check that myself. But it’s a good piece of information.

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satrow wrote:

MS announced changes ~7 months ago that were being rolled out to Insiders on Windows 11

Yesterday, I asked Susan to check her Win11 Insider’s build to see whether the visual tools had changed. The answer is no. For a larger drive, FAT32 was not offered as an option.

To be absolutely clear about what I mean by “Visual,” I mean what you see when you right-click a drive and select Format, then activate the File system dropdown to see which options are available:

FAT32 is not available here. As the Bleeping Computer article mentioned and the underlying Window Blog post states, FAT32 is available for drives up to 2TB via the format command at the command line.

I consider this unsatisfactory. The visual approach identifies which types of formats are allowed for the specific device examined. The format command just does what you tell it. The visual solution is considerably more user-friendly and thus safer.

The insider’s build mentioned in Microsoft’s post is quite old. I wanted to see if the format command was present in my current stable Win11 builds for both 23H2 and 24H2. I used a 64GB Lexar thumb drive for the test. I emptied the drive, formatted it as exFAT using the visual tools, then formatted again with the format command. Results:

Win11 Pro 23H2 build 22631.5039 – format fails with error message The volume is too big for FAT32.

Win1 Pro 24H2 build 26100.3194 – format also fails, same message.

So, this fix is still in the lab.

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satrow

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