New laptop, now need to transfer some files...

[breakpoint]

Well we got a new laptop and now I will be using our old desktop to do such things as photoshop only and general web use, as well as it will be a dvd and music burning setup. I have to clear allot of stuff off it because it is just terribly slow with as much stuff on it as it has now.The thing is I have a ton of software, and about 100gb's of images on the pc that I need to backup but really don't know the best way to do so. It has a dvd burner, but its only 1.1mhz with 512 ram ( I have a gig in but the bios only supports 512, its 10 years old:tdown so when it comes to burning dvd's be it data or movie it takes forever, not to mention with as much stuff as I have it would be slightly costly to burn that many dvd's. If I could just transfer the stuff directly to the laptop I could burn all of it to dvd and just deal with the cost because I have to have the stuff, allot of the images are weddings I have done and I have them on dvd but I keep all the images for 2 years as stated in the contract with the wedding party so its nice to have 2 backups in case disaster happens to 1 of them. The laptop burns stuff super fast, so burning it with it wouldn't be that big of a deal.


Is there any way to do a usb to usb connection and drag and drop the files from one to the other maybe? I have never had to do this because in the past I would just pull the HD and put in a new one and transfer stuff I used onto the new HD through master/slave setup, but now the old pc is IDE and the new is SATA of course. What would be the easiest way of going about this problem guys? If I left anything out just ask:tup:


Thanks!

 

[Sharky.]

Get an external drive enclosure (with USB jack), chuck the old drive in it with an IDE/SATA converter cable and you should be away laughing.

Something like this: http://www.google.com/products/cata...ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB4Q8wIwAw#ps-sellers

 

[overheating]

Why wouldn't you just put both computers on a network and copy away?

 

[TB]

An IDE to USB converter could do the trick or if both computers have a network card, you could go with a crossover cable.

 

[Azuremen]

Just get an external storage solution to back up to. DVD and CD-R foils deteriorate over time, around 5-7 years for noticeable data loss, so they are a poor long term back up anyhow.

 

[breakpoint]

Get an external drive enclosure (with USB jack), chuck the old drive in it with an IDE/SATA converter cable and you should be away laughing.

Something like this: http://www.google.com/products/cata...ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB4Q8wIwAw#ps-sellers

I had one of those a year ago and I took it back because the desktop doesn't have 2.0 usb and transferring things usb takes ages, just filling up my wifes 4gb mp3 player took about 6 hours

Why wouldn't you just put both computers on a network and copy away?

I just recently got a wifi setup together, the wifi card in the desktop doesn't support the encryption I'm using on my network so that is kind of lame. I don't use wep considering I cracked 4 different wep signals around me to use the few weeks I was waiting on my internet to get installed, very unsecure.

Just get an external storage solution to back up to. DVD and CD-R foils deteriorate over time, around 5-7 years for noticeable data loss, so they are a poor long term back up anyhow.

Good point, I have about 300gb's of just phtos of my kids/our family, I even have negatives in a safety deposit box in case of a fire, we love our pictures. We love them mainly because my wife and I both grew up in pretty bad homes as kids and neither one of us have a single picture of us as kids, I want mine to grow up and be able to see all sorts of things from childhood and not think, wow I guess they didn't even care about me enough to take some pictures....

The crossover cable TB mention seems like the best option to get all the stuff onto the laptop and then to transfer it to another HD from it since it has the latest usb ports and will be loads faster than the ancient desktop.

 

[nick09]

Yeah it's best to get a crossover cable as TB mentioned. It will allow you to transfer your files as fast as 1Gbs easily. Just make sure your old computer has a Ethernet port(it will look like a regular phone port but larger and it will have eight pins).

You can go for the ide to usb method if you are not afraid of opening your computer. The usb method will just be a bit slower.

 

[breakpoint]

I not afraid to open it at all, I have 2 HD's packed in there in a very weird way because the dell cases are so small, its got IDE cables running all around the MB. The desktop has a ethernet card, its the only way I can use internet on it because of the wifi card not working with my encryption.

 

[GTP_Deathwalker]

I would say either use a fireWire cable or Ethernet to connect both computers together, ethernet being the more easily accessible and possibly faster, depending on the network card, cable and of course, if both machines have FireWire. i for one used Ethernet to transfer 50+GB of data from an old laptop to my new desktop, didnt take too long at all...

 

[nick09]

Well it doesn't hurt to go get the best cable you can get so check this CAT6 crossover cable. These cables support 10Gb speeds(that is if your Ethernet card supports it) and these cables gets less interference. That means the connection will remain more solid and the loss of data over the line will be less.

Now once you remove all of that data from your old desktop will need to defrag it. I always use Defraggler because it's a simple and easy to use program that can be taken with you or installed onto the computer. The other programs from that link are also very useful too.

 

[breakpoint]

I can actually make the crossover cable with cat6 I have laying around for a fraction of cost of buying one, I made my 100ft ethernet cable for running to my 360 because to buy one that length was a bit costly but to make it was only about 4 bucks! Once I get all the old stuff off the C: drive on the desktop I am reformatting it completely, I am swapping a bunch of it over to the 250gb drive that is already in the pc as the media slave drive, I'm only keeping software on the C: drive that I will be using allot like PS and convertxtodvd and dvdfab, a good 80gb's of software is coming off of it. Even though the C: drive is 125gb's the pc runs so slow when I get close to filling it up even keeping it defragged on a weekly basis. Since it doesn't support but 512mb of ram I am using the HD for virtual memory to help out that area, I also use the desktop as a media server for my 360 so I don't have to have music and movies and such on my 360's HD because its only 120gb and I have games installed on it and all also.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

These cables support 10Gb speeds(that is if your Ethernet card supports it)

Most hard drives won't make it past 100MB/s on average, whether reading or writing. So that's a bit irrelevant.

 

[breakpoint]

Most hard drives won't make it past 100MB/s on average, whether reading or writing. So that's a bit irrelevant.

I didn't know that the cables supported 10gb speeds so it was nice to know that, just as I didn't know that most HD's won't make it past 100MB's on average. Technically both are irrelevant to many considering I don't really care about the speeds of either, but they are nice to know so I'm glad they were posted, so it was relevant for me:tup: