Transferring between PCs

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I'm on the verge of buying a new PC so can anyone tell me how to go about transferring files over such as photos and videos? I have five years worth of my two boys so there's a lot of data. I don't want to buy an external hard drive just to move it across once. Any ideas?? :geek:

Oh, and is this any good? :?

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my advice for transferring a large amount of data, take out the old hard drive and slave it to your new PC and copy the data across.

The other option would be to buy an external caddy, put the old hdd in that and copy your data across - the advantage of the first method is you will get a faster transfer rate than over USB and it cost nowt!

The plus point of the second is that caddy's are fairly cheap and you now have an external hdd :D
 
moodymick said:
The plus point of the second is that caddy's are fairly cheap and you now have an external hdd :D

An external drive where you can make backups... you do know about backups don't you Pig Cat?

The three rules of backups:

1. Back it up
2. Back it up
3. Back it up

My family hate me, they come to me with a PC crashed & burned and say "can you fix it and get all the photos back?" and my first response is "sure, hand me your backups and I'll get right on it".

Seriously folks - even Tesco sell a 1TB external drive for under £70 - should be enough for most people to keep several backups on.
 
Yeah back it up...The caddie is a good idea, HD's are so cheap nowadays there's no excuse.

If you have that much data (how much?)...and a CD/DVD burner. I'd be burning a few backup disks too.

If you don't do any of the above and were thinking of keeping the second machine it's not difficult to set up a very basic network with a cheap router and yeah you guessed it use it for back up/server.
 
antdad said:
Yeah back it up...The caddie is a good idea, HD's are so cheap nowadays there's no excuse.

If you have that much data (how much?)...and a CD/DVD burner. I'd be burning a few backup disks too.

If you don't do any of the above and were thinking of keeping the second machine it's not difficult to set up a very basic network with a cheap router and yeah you guessed it use it for back up/server.

+1 on the Network option, assuming you have a router which can connect more than 1 computer, you might have to change some setting to enable you to "see" the hard drive in your old PC but then its easy to pull what you want across and leave the original as a backup.
 
oh man...cant believe u aint backed it up

u need to go and check this out Dropbox...<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dropbox.com/...online" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.dropbox.com/...online</a><!-- m --> storage

in the meantime i am sure i have an old laptop hdd u can hav...if i can find it...in a caddie

but dont hold yer breath on the hdd

send me a pm with an address...i have found the caddie...but use at your own risk as cant guarantee it

or

just build a new pc first then add the old hdd into as a spare drive...lots of options but the power supply on that one you picked is pretty low...be careful if you need to add stuff to it

have a play here to see what it comes up with

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It might be worth estimating the amount of data. A few dvd's, if you have a burner, a small hard drive or even an old ipod might be enough.

External hard drives are very cheap and very handy.

edit:

In any case if you're not going to be using the old computer, and it will fit, it's probably worth pulling out the hard drive and sticking it in the new computer as an extra as moodymick said.
 
Thanks for all your replies. Before you all have heart attacks I DO back up. Latest data is sent automatically each night to Mozy in America. I suppose in theory I could tell them about my new PC and 'restore' the data to it. But my broadband connection is slow and it would take a few weeks! I do have a laptop that I could use to put things on temporarily. 120GB - so should be fine. Only just thought of this after reading the replies. What cable do I need to connect it to the PC? If you could just send me a link to it either on eBuyer or Amazon that would be cool.

N1vlo, what's this about the power supply? I don't intend to add anything to it except software. Not sure what the problem might be here.

Thanks again, this is very helpful.
 
hunnymonster said:
PC - Something like this. Copy the entire old PC's drive on to it and then slowly as time allows delete the stuff that you definitely don't need (the .exe files) - don't leave it connected to the new PC, just wheel it out once a week and back up to it...

Thanks Hunny, that sounds like a good idea. I have found it here for even less!

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Well I've got my hard drive. I take it that it's just a case of copying and pasting C: drive on to the hard drive? Is it that simple?? :?

Then when I get the new PC I connect it up and do the same with any files I want to transfer.

Edit: Just discovered it's not that simple. Help - HUNNYMONSTER, N1VLO, ANYONE!!!! :lol:
 
What's the problem Pig Cat? I'd just connect up the hard drive and copy over the folders containing the stuff you want to keep (My Documents, My Pictures....etc.). No point in copying over your whole C: drive.
 
Yellow Jim said:
What's the problem Pig Cat? I'd just connect up the hard drive and copy over the folders containing the stuff you want to keep (My Documents, My Pictures....etc.). No point in copying over your whole C: drive.

That's true. I think it didn't like me trying to copy the whole thing!
 
Once you've done this, i would think about partitioning your new hard drive and putting your 'My Documents' folder on the D: drive. This way, if windows implodes your data files will be safe-ish.

Of course, if your power supply blows your motherboard, frying your processor and RAM just before killing your hdd (well not yours, or mine - it was my sons...... 'Dad.....my computer won't start and there's smoke coming from the case!' ), you're knackered :roll:
 
Sort all your pics and vids into one transferable folder, drag and drop to new disk. That should do it.

If you want to segment the drive I'd do that first.
 
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