Transfering files from an internal hard drive.

[Guest]

Here are the facts:

Old computer decided to change religions and become a toaster oven.
The owner had to buy a new computer, I recomended to get the latest version
(kick me in the head, what was I think of!)
The old computer is now sitting on the floor performing the oly tasks it is
capable of. Collecting dust, papers, and a nice flat surface magnet for
anything I need to set things down on.
So in English, there is NO old computer to transfer from.

We do not have an exteral hard drive case, and have no intentions of
spending more money for an external drive. (Try as I might to convience the
owner of the great wonders of having a portable 60 GB drive. I am still in
the dog-house for recommending Vista).

The folders on the old hard drive are unreachable. Except when browsing
using the transfer wizard. At least they can bee seen, but like seeing the
Holly Grail while on a different mountain than the one I am on, it is
unreachable.

It seems the Easy Transfer Wizard can find the files on the hard drive, but
retreiving them has to be difficult. The settings transfer wizard does not
like the desired transfer settings to be on anything easy like in the tower,
I have to do something difficult like use CD-roms, flash memory, etc.
Apparently, Microsoft is too narrow-sighted to realize that some people might
do something easly like drop the old hard-drive into the Vista machine, but I
digress.

Now the new computer, with Vista on it, has offered several times and is
more than willing to format the old hard drive, but the old drive has all of
the good stuff like, Office 2003, and the stuff the owner never thought of
backing up, but they want me to save.

Short of formatting the Vista hard drive, what are my options? I have not
ruled that out either.

 

[Rock]

Here are the facts:

Old computer decided to change religions and become a toaster oven.
The owner had to buy a new computer, I recomended to get the latest
version
(kick me in the head, what was I think of!)
The old computer is now sitting on the floor performing the oly tasks it
is
capable of. Collecting dust, papers, and a nice flat surface magnet for
anything I need to set things down on.
So in English, there is NO old computer to transfer from.

We do not have an exteral hard drive case, and have no intentions of
spending more money for an external drive. (Try as I might to convience
the
owner of the great wonders of having a portable 60 GB drive. I am still
in
the dog-house for recommending Vista).

The folders on the old hard drive are unreachable. Except when browsing
using the transfer wizard. At least they can bee seen, but like seeing
the
Holly Grail while on a different mountain than the one I am on, it is
unreachable.

It seems the Easy Transfer Wizard can find the files on the hard drive,
but
retreiving them has to be difficult. The settings transfer wizard does
not
like the desired transfer settings to be on anything easy like in the
tower,
I have to do something difficult like use CD-roms, flash memory, etc.
Apparently, Microsoft is too narrow-sighted to realize that some people
might
do something easly like drop the old hard-drive into the Vista machine,
but I
digress.

Now the new computer, with Vista on it, has offered several times and is
more than willing to format the old hard drive, but the old drive has all
of
the good stuff like, Office 2003, and the stuff the owner never thought of
backing up, but they want me to save.

Short of formatting the Vista hard drive, what are my options? I have not
ruled that out either.

In any event you can't can't transfer programs. Those need to be
reinstalled from the original media. Don't use Windows Easy Transfer, just
copy the important data files directly from the old drive to the new. You
may have to take ownership of the files since Vista will see them as created
by a different user. From Start | Help and Support search on Ownership for
more info.