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Transferring data to a new hard disk
Church
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have a compilation of data on my hard drive that I wish to move to another hard drive, but I have no re-writable disks. Am I going to have to buy some, or is there another way I can do this?
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2. Use a USB to IDE/SATA adapter or enclosure to connect the 2nd hard drive as an external drive and copy the data over.
3. Put the second hard drive in a second computer and copy the files over the network.
4. Copy the files to a flash thumbdrive first
5. Upload the data to someplace on the Internet, swap the hard drives out, and download it back
Could I do this just by connecting two computers via an ethernet cable?
I apologise for having the computational literacy of a cave dweller.
Yes, you can do this.
Just chuck a Cat5 between them, and run the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard.
If you're using XP, you put in the XP disc and select "Perform other tasks" and click on the wizard.
Run it on the computer you're transferring TO first but leave it running at the first screen.
Then run it on the computer you're transferring FROM, and leave it running at the first screen, then run both wizards together.
You'll get a password from the new computer which you have to enter on the old computer.
Then you have to wait for about sixty million years for it to transfer.
Ok, exaggeration, but it took me about 6 hours to transfer a 7gb World of Warcraft folder, a 1gb Warcraft 3 folder and a 16gb My Documents folder from a 7200rpm 120gb HDD to a 7200rpm 300g hdd.
Connecting the two computers via a network is the first step. Whether you can do it by connecting them directly with an ethernet cable depends on a couple things:
1. A regular ethernet cable is a "straight through" cable (e.g., pin 1 on one end is wired to pin 1 on the other end and so on) and if you have dumb Ethernet cards on both sides, then it will not work. The solution in this case is to get what's known as a "crossover cable" which looks just like an ethernet cable, but has a couple of the wires crossed.
2. Connecting both computers via ordinary ethernet cables directly to a hub, switch, or router will also work.
3. If at least one of your Ethernet cards is smart enough, it will detect that you've connected two computers directly with an ordinary Ethernet cable and switch into 'crossover mode' itself and make things work.
You really have to just try it to see what happens. If you get a link light, it's likely that they're connected.
Once they're connected, then you have to mount one hard drive on the other computer using something like Windows File Sharing. This can work really easily or it can be a real pain in the ass. In general, the first thing to try is to find out what your computer's windows networking names are. You can find this under the "Computer Name" tab when you right click on My Computer and go to "properties" (among other places). That's on XP, it may be slightly different on other versions of windows. Let's say they're COMPUTER1 and COMPUTER2.
On COMPUTER2, right-click on My Computer and hit "Map Network Drive." Pick an arbitrary free drive letter (let's say Z:) and then under "Folder" put:
\\COMPUTER1\C$
If it asks you for a username and password, use the username and password you use to log into COMPUTER1. If you don't use a password, you may need to assign yourself one on COMPUTER1. If all goes well, you should now have a virtual Z: drive on COMPUTER2 that is mapped to the C: drive on COMPUTER1. Copy your files in Windows Explorer and right-click on Z: and disconnect it when you're done.
There are about a million reasons this might not work; sometimes Windows has a hard time finding other computers, sometimes authentication doesn't work, sometimes it works better to specify the other computer's name using its IP address like:
\\192.168.0.1\C$
(but doing that requires putting both computers on the same subnet if you're not using a broadband router or some other device in between that will serve them both IPs over DHCP yadda yadda)