I not sure if this is the right group to post this but here goes.
I will soon have the daunting task of copying most of the files from
my existing pc to my new one. The OS for both is XP Home/SP2. My
internet service is DSL. The old machine has a cd burner. I have never
done this before and some pointers would really be appreciated. There
must be several ways of doing this.
You can use CDs, which has the added advantage that you keep the CDs as a
set of backups for your data, but as another poster noted, this works well
for documents and pictures, not so well for programs. Alternately, you can
connect the two computers using their network cards.
If you have a router, you can simply plug both machines into the router and
ask each to accept IP addresses from the router. If you don't, then
disconnect the cable at the modem end and plug it into the other machine;
run the Network Setup wizard on both machines and manually set the IP
address of each to 192.168.0.xxx where xxx is a number between 0 and 255
unique to that machine. When you're finished transferring files, you'll
need to move the cable back and reset the network properties to accept an IP
address from the modem again.
To get access to one machine on the network from the other one, the
directory or file you want to copy must be shared. To share a directory,
right-click on the folder and select "sharing..." from the menu that
appears. It will be fairly self-explanatory from there.
I move files back and forth between several machines all the time, and to do
this I maintain shared folders on each machine called C:\Transfer\ and
C:\Sortsite. I organize the stuff I want to move into those folders and
then, on the other machine, just drag and drop the files from My Network
Places to wherever I want to use them.
As you guessed, there are many ways to do what you want to do.
If the older machine will not be kept in service, you could just transplant
its hard drive into the new machine as a second drive, and move what you
want whenever you want.
Seagate's website has programs you can download that are designed to help
you install and initialize a new Seagate drive; however, they work with
other brands as well, and IIRC include a utility for transferring programs
from the old one to the new one.
You can also purchase software to do the same thing. Norton Ghost is the
elite and professional way, but there are several other choices.
