Transfer of files

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alan
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A

Alan

Hi,
I've just bought a new machine to replace my aging five year old one. I have
about 11 gigs of pictures, music, videos etc on the old one which I want to
put on the new one. I can only connect one machine to the web at a time and
the old one will write to a CD but not to a DVD. Obviously I don't want to
copy loads of files onto CD's, is there any way to connect the two machines
directly together to achieve the transfer? If not, any other suggestions to
do this?
TIA,
Alan.
 
Alan said:
Hi,
I've just bought a new machine to replace my aging five year old one. I have
about 11 gigs of pictures, music, videos etc on the old one which I want to
put on the new one. I can only connect one machine to the web at a time and
the old one will write to a CD but not to a DVD. Obviously I don't want to
copy loads of files onto CD's, is there any way to connect the two machines
directly together to achieve the transfer? If not, any other suggestions to
do this?
TIA,
Alan.
Click to expand...

Hi Alan,

Do your two machines have onboard LAN connections? If they do, then you
are in luck.
Connect them together with a crossover (xover) cable, and set up
home/small business networking. Put them in the same workgroup (default
MSHOME is OK). and "share" the folder(s) containing the files you want
to move.
On your new machine, go to "my network places" and you should see the
shared folders from your old machine. Copy any files you want.
If you don't have onboard LAN connection, a generic nic card is quite
cheap ($10 australian)and easy to install.
Good luck.
BarryG
 
Thanks for that, but if possible I don't want to have to buy anything to do
this. It will be a one off operation and I don't want to use two machines,
once I get the transfer done I'm going to give the old machine away to a
local kids club. If I have to I'll use the CD option but that's a pain!
Regards,
Alan.
 
Alan said:
Hi,
I've just bought a new machine to replace my aging five year old one. I
have about 11 gigs of pictures, music, videos etc on the old one which I
want to put on the new one. I can only connect one machine to the web at a
time and the old one will write to a CD but not to a DVD. Obviously I
don't want to copy loads of files onto CD's, is there any way to connect
the two machines directly together to achieve the transfer? If not, any
other suggestions to do this?
TIA,
Alan.
Click to expand...

Remove the HDD from the old machine and install it as a slave in the
new.....
 
In that case, see Gordon's suggestion.
Thanks for that, but if possible I don't want to have to buy anything to do
this. It will be a one off operation and I don't want to use two machines,
once I get the transfer done I'm going to give the old machine away to a
local kids club. If I have to I'll use the CD option but that's a pain!
Regards,
Alan.
Click to expand...
 
I'll second the suggestion to use a Crossover ethernet cable to connect the
two machines.

Then, use the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard to collect your files,
settings, and profile information. You should be able to collect all your
Bookmarks, email accounts, files, etc with it.

Start > (All) Programs > Accessories > System Tools menu.

If your old machine isn't updated with SP2 and updates, you may need to run
it on your new machine first, and create a wizard disk to run it on the old
machine. Maybe some MVP here can provide input on the intercompatibility
issue of the tool.

Will
 
Alan said:
Thanks for that, but if possible I don't want to have to buy anything to do
this. It will be a one off operation and I don't want to use two machines,
once I get the transfer done I'm going to give the old machine away to a
local kids club. If I have to I'll use the CD option but that's a pain!
Regards,
Click to expand...


Hi Alan,

I agree with not spending any more dough than you have to.
But a xover cable would cost in the order of $5. It's a fair bet the
new machine already has an onboard nic, and the old one *might* have a
nic, so another $10 for a pci nic card for the old machine.
How many CDs will you need? How much will they cost? How much is your
time worth?

The kids club could make use of the nic in the machine if you leave it
there, or take it back out and stick it in the drawer for a rainy day.

For sheer EASE, the xover cable is the winner.
For no $$, temporarily move the hard disk from your old machine to the
new one to copy your files across. The risk is that you have to open
your new machine, and possibly void your warranty if it goes pear
shaped.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
BarryG
 
Thanks to you all for your advice and help, it's very much appreciated, I
think I'll try the crossover cable,
Thanks Again,
Alan.
 
Don't be cheap. The safest way is to get a cable, connect the two PC's and
transfer the data over. If the PC's got ethernet port, get a "cross over"
ethernet cable. If not, there are also serial, parallel. now USB cables of
the "cross over" type that transfers data.

The trick is having the two PC's seeing either other after connecting. I
have software called "Fastlynx", that I've used over a dozen years, that I
recently upgraded, that I can order with cables with that saves me the
trouble of figuring out the details of networking the PC's.

I'm always leery of taking apart five year old machines, plugging drives
into new machines, find out it doesn't work for some reason, then put the
drive back to the old machine, and find the old machine didn't work either,
because I knocked out a cable, bent a pin, or whatever.

Ask me how many times this happened to me.

I subscribe to the theory that when I want to be cheap, save me a buck, I
get punished by "whatver goes wrong will go wrong".
 
Just for information, I bought a crossover cable and couldn't get it to
work, don't ask me why, I'm not that good at this sort of thing, it cost
next to nothing anyway so no problem there.
A friend of mine then lent me a 250GB external hard drive and that did it
nicely.
I didn't realise the extent of the difference in speed between a USB1 and a
USB2, over four hours to put the data from the old machine on to the drive,
eleven minutes to put it on the new one, about 25 times faster I believe,
Thanks again to you all,
Regards,
Alan.
 
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