[metadat]

Diskomater appears to be an open source, platform agnostic version of this underlying technology!

In case, like me, "Target Disk Mode" is not something you're familiar with:

> People also ask What is the target disk mode? If you have two Mac computers with USB, USB-C or Thunderbolt ports, you can connect them so that one of them appears as an external hard disk on the other. This is called target disk mode. Note: If either of the computers has macOS 11 or later installed, you must connect the two computers using a Thunderbolt cable.

Sidenote: Thunderbolt cables are special USB-C cables, i.e. the wire between your Mac and the USB-C power brick.

[cjdell]

I remember using Target Disk Mode on my iBook G4 over FireWire cables! Very useful for copying large amounts of data before gigabit Ethernet was common place.

[mschuster91]

> Sidenote: Thunderbolt cables are special USB-C cables, i.e. the wire between your Mac and the USB-C power brick.

Not exactly - that is only sort-of valid for Thunderbolt 3 and its successor/merger USB-C 4. TB1 and 2 used the Mini DisplayPort connector.

TB3/4 use the USB-C connector, but unlike USB-C, at longer lengths (per standard: 0.5m [1], but there longer passive cables as well, e.g. [2]) are the cable isn't passive or semi-passive (cables supporting USB-C PD for higher currents/voltages contain "marker" chipsets in the plugs) - it's an "active" cable with special transmission/driver circuitry to achieve tolerable signal integrity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Thunde...

[2] https://www.amazon.de/Cable-Matters-Zertifiziertes-Thunderbo...

[chx]

Pedantic (but important) footnote: it's USB4. It's not USB 4.0, it's not USB-C 4, it's just USB4. https://www.usb.org/usb4