Mac To Windows Part 3: The Comparison

The transfer

I used One Commander more and discovered that it has a window at the bottom where you can see the processes in progress. For files larger than a few Mb this is essential as you can see when the operation is done.

I was copying around 700 GB from an exFAT format external disk but you just can’t drag and drop 700 GB. No. Not from Mac or Windows. Actually the Mac would just say “an error occurred” if you tried to copy a file bigger than about 16 GB (I am in no way sure of this figure) and Windows was the same: to copy folders of files summing to 700 Gb you must do it in small steps. I am unsure of the exact max size again, (2 GB?) Commander would just crash and I would need to restart the computer to get it to run again if I tried to copy too much in one go.

This for me is something I have not seen since the dark days of early computers: my Mac just doesn’t do this. Maybe it is just that I have never done this before, and there is some way to transfer big data that I haven’t found yet.

More on One Commander

First thing to note: There is no undo. Fortunately for me all I am doing is copying duplicate files from one drive to another and at worst case I can always get another copy of the original, but an undo feature would sure help. You open the bottom window with the bird-like symbol on the bottom right of the window so you can see operations in progress. Also there is a lot more to the interface, I have now got it to show two drives with their paths in list view-like form above them which is really good. Also figured out how to copy from one window to the other when the windows are full (buttons in the divider) – buuut still have the occasional crash for no reason I can find.

Actually I suspect that some or maybe even most of the files that I am transferring will be useless, but I have to try anyway: they represent a lot of work and even getting only some of it back is better than spending days or weeks downloading individual files again and loading them into the folders – there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of items. I can recreate any of the scenes I made before, but having only the original source content files is better than nothing. Think of it this way: you have the set, props and actors but there is still a lot of work to put everything in place on the set, dress and pose the actors, add lights to suit and position and prepare the cameras before you can take a picture. 

Good news: the content I transferred has been located by DAZ and it looks like the whole tedious task of copying everything across in chunks was worth it. Best of all, the files open the same as they did on the Mac.This is pretty damn good, better than I expected.

Hackintosh?

I took a look at putting Mac OSX on the new PC . . . but it is a Core i9 and there is currently no info on how to do it- it seems to be too new for that . . . . but then I don’t care so much now that things are coming together without it. Besides, a hack is a hack, there are always things that don’t work properly in hackintoshes. I’m guessing here but it looks to me that Apple’s new hardware will make it even harder to make Hackintoshes by adding specialised chips on the motherboard that can’t be (or are difficult to) emulated or worked around. 

The big test: How much faster is it?

Since the whole file transfer process went so well that the Win version of Daz Studio can read all of my Mac created files, I decided to do a speed comparison. This was using only the CPUs, please note:

I opened exactly the same file in both versions then used the mouses to start rendering simultaneously, or close enough for me anyway. The result? 

Based on time, the 10 Core 7900X is 1.2 times faster than the dual 6-Core X5680s. 

This makes the chart in my previous post (The Contenders) very wrong. According to the benchmarks, the difference should have been more like 1.6. It is possible that the difference was reduced since the data in the PC is stored on a spinning disc while the Mac has a 1TB SSD – but I don’t think that is right: once the scene is loaded it should not need to access the storage media unless it is a very big scene (more than, say, 32 GB including textures) which it isn’t.

Yes, you might also say “Oh, it’s that patch they sent out recently that messed up the results” but I don’t really care. I think it clearly indicates just how vague and inaccurate benchmarks can be, and it also hints that there are hidden differences that affect the results.

So there it is. No chance of getting several of my favourite Mac OS features, I still don't know my way around windows but I'm getting there.  Maybe I will discover some addons for Windows that will makeit better . .  . . but that's all or now.