Transferring my entire system to a new computer.

[SCPO]

Recently my 'puter died - fried motherboard. It was a 2.4 AMD with 2
internal IDE's (80 & 160 gigs), an external 500 gig HD, HP scanner, HP
inkjet, cable modem, Sony DVD writer, 20" LCD ACER monitor, and running
store-bought XP (with all the thousands of upgrades and fixes) Home
Edition.

I ordered a new BASIC midi tower DELL dual layer with an 80 gig HD -
nothing else - with the intention of swapping the 2 IDE drives from my old
system, the Sony DVD writer, the networking card, Nvidia graphics card, and
Soundblaster sound card. This is probably flawed reasoning, but I was
trying to avoid the time and expense of taking this to a "shop" somewhere.

Well the first SNAFU with my "great plan" was that the DELL machime came
with SATA drives. $%#&*@#$!!!!

Plan 2: Take the 2 IDE drives out of the dead 'puter and put them in an old
1gHz machine I have and transfer everything on both IDE's to the DELL via
USB cable - sort of making a mirror image of my old system.

Will this work? Do I need to set-up both old and new computers each with a
monitor, keyboard, mouse to do a computer-to-computer transfer?

I have a feeling a bunch of y'all are going to jump on me with both feet!
But I am trying to expedite this "process" as best I know how!

And if anyone has a better solution to my dilemma, I'm all ears!

Hope this is clear and thanks for taking the time to read and respond.

Fair winds and following seas,

SCPO
USN(ret)

 

[nass]

Recently my 'puter died - fried motherboard. It was a 2.4 AMD with 2
internal IDE's (80 & 160 gigs), an external 500 gig HD, HP scanner, HP
inkjet, cable modem, Sony DVD writer, 20" LCD ACER monitor, and running
store-bought XP (with all the thousands of upgrades and fixes) Home
Edition.

I ordered a new BASIC midi tower DELL dual layer with an 80 gig HD -
nothing else - with the intention of swapping the 2 IDE drives from my old
system, the Sony DVD writer, the networking card, Nvidia graphics card, and
Soundblaster sound card. This is probably flawed reasoning, but I was
trying to avoid the time and expense of taking this to a "shop" somewhere.

Well the first SNAFU with my "great plan" was that the DELL machime came
with SATA drives. $%#&*@#$!!!!

Plan 2: Take the 2 IDE drives out of the dead 'puter and put them in an old
1gHz machine I have and transfer everything on both IDE's to the DELL via
USB cable - sort of making a mirror image of my old system.

Will this work? Do I need to set-up both old and new computers each with a
monitor, keyboard, mouse to do a computer-to-computer transfer?

I have a feeling a bunch of y'all are going to jump on me with both feet!
But I am trying to expedite this "process" as best I know how!

And if anyone has a better solution to my dilemma, I'm all ears!

Hope this is clear and thanks for taking the time to read and respond.

Fair winds and following seas,

SCPO
USN(ret)

Simple way to approach this is a USB enclosure, hook the OLD HDD you want
to transfer files/folders from it as Salve and Start the New DELL machien and
explorer the USB (OLD HDD) and you will see your Docs, Images, My Documents.
Note: Don't Copy the whole of MY Documents to the new computer as it will
replace the New My documents on the New computer and may be more like users
settings.
HTH.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Moving XP to new MB or Computer:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

 

[SCPO]

Simple way to approach this is a USB enclosure, hook the OLD HDD you
want to transfer files/folders from it as Salve and Start the New DELL
machien and explorer the USB (OLD HDD) and you will see your Docs,
Images, My Documents. Note: Don't Copy the whole of MY Documents to
the new computer as it will replace the New My documents on the New
computer and may be more like users settings.
HTH.

Hey, this is perfect - just the kind of info I was looking!!

And, Circuit City has enclosures on sale this week for 20 bucks! I'm in hog
heaven!

BTW: since I have both a master and a slave IDE drive that I need to copy
files from do I need to change the dip switches on the master? (I'm not
sure I still have the paperwork.) Do you see any harm in copying over the
entire operating system, drivers, etc.? Or should I install XP on the new
machine as well as peripherals that require installed drivers? Any advice
is more than welcome!

Thanks for the great tip!

Fair winds and following seas,

SCPO
USN(ret)