[fatboySlimfast]

Right my current desktop is nacked, its 3 years old and stuff keeps going wrong on it! i dont want to spend any money on it BUT i need to transfer large amount of data from it to new pc. Now i know you can network to do etc etc but i also need to back up my laptop stuff and all! Would an External hard drive to preserve the integrity of my data etc be the way forward? I am sick of having hundreds of ming cd's kicking around by the way!

[andy_e]

I'd go for an external USB hard drive. they are pretty cheap nowadays, you can even get them from Tesco, 80gb! How much stuff needs backing up?

[Bubba]

Right my current desktop is nacked, its 3 years old and stuff keeps going wrong on it! i dont want to spend any money on it BUT i need to transfer large amount of data from it to new pc. Now i know you can network to do etc etc but i also need to back up my laptop stuff and all! Would an External hard drive to preserve the integrity of my data etc be the way forward? I am sick of having hundreds of ming cd's kicking around by the way!

Firstly, what's wrong with the existing PC ? I bet a re-install of windows would sort it out.

Anyway, here's what I'd do:

- remove hard drive from old PC
- open up new PC and mount old hard drive as a slave drive.
- either leave it in the new PC, or copy everything over and then replace it in the old one.
- use a direct cable connection to copy stuff from your lapper to the new PC; it's slow, but it saves buying network cards, etc.
- the new pc should have a dvd burner so no need for loads of old cds. it's sensible to burn to dvd rather than keep everything on an external drive. What if the computer gets robbed like when you leave the back door open

Better solution would be to buy 2 PC network cards, 1 wireless laptop network card,  router and some cable and just network the 3 PCs together. Then use the old one as a file server, the new one for work, and the lapper anywhere in the house.

[fatboySlimfast]

quite a lot of important stuff to do with my work. Im also self employed so need to keep years of accounts etc on file. The usb hard drive ting is what i thought, seems sensible to use it alongside my laptop to save everything! Also got a lot of cds wit digital images which i want to keep but never use!

[Bubba]

Anything important like that should be burnt to DVD - two identical copies. Hard drives can go wrong and recovery of data from a borked drive is ludicrously expensive. I've lost 100g of music before when a drive went down.

What if the external drive goes pop?

[andy_e]

Have you tried shutting down and restarting?  

[fatboySlimfast]

Have you tried shutting down and restarting

cheeky get.

Better solution would be to buy 2 PC network cards, 1 wireless laptop network card, router and some cable and just network the 3 PCs together. Then use the old one as a file server, the new one for work, and the lapper anywhere in the house.

yeh, right, especially with my computer skills!

I bet a re-install of windows would sort it out.

done it, sorted out some of the probs but the cd drives fucked and i dont think its the drivers, the network card has sporadically gone down twice and i can write the exspense off against tax

[Bubba]

I can give you a hand setting up the network, it'd only take a couple of hours.

A new CD drive is about £20 (or better still a dual layer DVD writer which would be more but still not that much) a new network card is about £10.

Only buy a new PC if your existing one is limiting the apps you want to run by being too slow, etc.

Knowing you, your PC will probably be chock full of spyware and viruses which is what's making it run slow.

I can sort it out for you if you like, but it'll cost you an ESB or two

What windows are you on btw? XP or (shudder) 98 ?

[fatboySlimfast]

tis sorted, thanks for the input

[Johnny Brown]

- remove hard drive from old PC
- open up new PC and mount old hard drive as a slave drive.
- either leave it in the new PC, or copy everything over and then replace it in the old one.

can I still do this if the old drive is win98 and the new one xp??????/

[clm]

What would cadfael do?

[Bubba]

- remove hard drive from old PC
- open up new PC and mount old hard drive as a slave drive.
- either leave it in the new PC, or copy everything over and then replace it in the old one.

can I still do this if the old drive is win98 and the new one xp??????/

I don't see why not - XP should be able to read a FAT 32 disk ok.

Once you've copied everything, just reformat the old disk to NTFS and use it as a second drive.

[Jim]

JB , just borrow my usb hard drive and copy it onto there then onto the new computer. its 80gig so should fit everything on. I'll bring it over when im in the peak next week.

[Control freak]

I don't see why not - XP should be able to read a FAT 32 disk ok.

Once you've copied everything, just reformat the old disk to NTFS and use it as a second drive.

WinXP will read FAT32 quite happily