Things Rico Likes, Part I: Target Disk Mode
I've been a Mac user since 2004: my first was a 15" PowerBook G4, one of the first-gen aluminum ones. Since then, I've gone through several Macs, both desktop and laptop, and the one thing that has consistently saved my bacon is Target Disk Mode (TDM).
For the uninitiated, the concept is simple: ever since Apple introduced FireWire/IEEE 1394 on their computers, it has been possible to turn any Mac into a bootable, read & write, external hard drive. This makes it incredibly easy to backup & restore files, clone hard drives between systems, and recover & repair broken file systems and structures. I've used TDM more times than I can remember, and each time it has saved my bacon.
Recently, I've been doing some reshuffling between Macs, some new and some old. TDM has smoothed that process considerably. Instead of copying files from one computer to an external drive and then to the other computer, I just reboot one Mac into TDM, hook it up via FireWire or Thunderbolt, and copy what I need over to the second Mac. TDM over Thunderbolt is stupidly fast, especially between systems with solid state drives.
If you're a Mac user with multiple machines, you should have the following in your arsenal: a Thunderbolt cable, a FireWire 800 cable, and a Thunderbolt-to-FW800 adapter. Most Macs from 2006-2007 on have FireWire 800 ports, and Macs from 2011 on are Thunderbolt-equipped. If you have an older Mac, include a FireWire 400-to-800 adapter, and maybe even a standard FW400 cable. I'm not dealing with anything older than 2009, so FW 800 does the trick just fine.
