Moving files

[Beaver]

What is the best way to transfer files from one computer to another? I've got a shit pile of photos and vids I want to back up so I want to move them to me laptop and burn them to DVD.

[schindlerpiste]

Can you download them on a USB flash memory stick, and then upload them on to the new system?

[Buzzworthy]

Can you download them on a USB flash memory stick, and then upload them on to the new system?

Seconded.

Or set up a network between the two computers, set up a shared folder,...........

[Snow Dog]

Networking is the way to go. If you have a router at home then it's (almost) as easy as plugging it in.

You can also map a network drive across the internet. First you have to share the folder(s) or drive(s) and setup the firewall so the other computer is trusted (by IP address).

On your laptop click on "map network drive" and use the IP address as the computer name:

\\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx\<share name>

[RShea]

If you want the fastest transfer, and you know what you are doing with the hard drives, the fastest method is always to pull the old hard drive, put it in the new computer and do a local move of the files to the new hard drive. You have to understand the IDE drive jumpers and set them correctly (Master and slave or cable select only if your existing drive is cable select.) You also have to have a extra power connector and ribbon cable connector (or temp disconnect a optical drive to use while transferring. The easiest is a USB drive or to CDR/W disks, then 3rd option if you do not want to open the systems up (and you have a network card in each or USB ethernet cards) is to hook the 2 systems in a network up to a cross over cable, hub, switch or router and standard ethernet network. It is slower to do the transfer than the hard drive transfer.

[Toby]

^ New computer's a laptop so he can't do the hard drive method.

[Staggerwing]

Yeah, actually he can, and it's not too difficult.

Just buy an inexpensive USB drive enclosure, and drop the drive from your desktop in there. They come in SATA and IDE flavors, with USB, firewire or even SATA, as the connection scheme.

After your done transfering to your new machine, buy a much bigger drive for the enclosure, and use it to archive all your media files. Buy a second, for backup, if you really care about your files.

My standard scheme it to download to my desktop, and then periodically back up to an external USB drive. The external is only powered for archiving and read purposes.

[danhikeski]

use a CROSSOVER network cable and hook directly from cpu to cpu. the crossover cable is different then a typical cat 5 cable,(2 of the leads are crossed) if you have/had an xbox and you linked two together, you have a crossover cable. your 2 cpus will be connected and you can share files.

[Beaver]

Using a memory stick would really suck, I'd be there for days. There may be an old router kicking around the office I can borrow, if not I'll build myself a crossover network cable. Thanks.

[wildstyle]

Using a memory stick would really suck, I'd be there for days. There may be an old router kicking around the office I can borrow, if not I'll build myself a crossover network cable. Thanks.

??? anyone who knows how to put a crossover cable together should know how to move files ...... get them networked and then use robocopy.exe if you need to bring over security ort anything funky like that.

download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...e-b18c4790cffd

instructions:
http://www.ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html

[stuckathuntermtn]

consider a small internal harddrive and an external USB case? you can use this perminantly as a back up drive. WinXP should automatically detect an external/removable drive once you plug it in. you'd probably have to format it once. and there's probably some cheap external harddrives out there. check http://www.newegg.com
EDIT: lacie makes some cool lego-like stackable external harddrives in different sizes

[RShea]

^ New computer's a laptop so he can't do the hard drive method.

Yes he can if he has the adapters or enclosure to go to USB external. It would be slower than a desktop, or he could take the laptop drive out of the new machine and use an adapter that they make to plug into the desktop (assuming the file system can be read by the older desktop).

[RShea]

??? anyone who knows how to put a crossover cable together should know how to move files ...... get them networked and then use robocopy.exe if you need to bring over security ort anything funky like that.

download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...e-b18c4790cffd

instructions:
http://www.ss64.com/nt/robocopy.html

But do they have the right tools (crimpers) to do the connectors? You can purchase a cross over cable (pretty cheap) either on-line or at any good computer store that knows what they are doing should stock one or make one for you.

The robocopy or any copy utility- xcopy, back-up software like syncback, etc. can do the copying.