last seen 2 weeks 2 days agoI have roughly about 1 million photos that I want to transfer to my new PC from my old PC. I usually just remove the old drive, switch the jumpers to slave, then plug it in. unfortunately, my old hard drive is not compatible with the new hardware (very old). I'm not sure if there's a program out there that will allow me to connect usb to usb to transfer the files. does anyone know of one, or some other way to do this? thanks.
Need to transfer programs (Data) to new computer
Posted on: Fri, 08/03/2007 - 4:30pm
You could:
1) move the Pictures to Myspace or Photobucket from the old computer then copy then to the new computer off Myspace/Photobucket
2) Invest in a Hard Drive to USB Enclosure if not borrow one. Not only can you transfer the photos this way, but if the drive is no longer needed and you can kewep the enclosure it makes a nice back-up Storage
3) Use a Jumpdrive to transfer files. The ones that convert Flash Cards to USB Jumpdrives are cheap at COmp USA and Flash Card prices are coming reasonable for 1 Gig and 2 gig Flash Cards and buying a jump drive and Flash card might be cheaper then buying and enclosure.
Thats pretty much what I did. I bought a usb drive enclosure & it worked great. it only took about 5 hours to transfer all the photos & videos. Thanks for the help guy's.
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I looked around and saw this thread as the most fit to ask this question.
I did go to school to be a computer tech, but things didn't "pan-out" after finishing school. Anyways, so I should know the answer to this but...
Can too many factory restores create alot of wear on the hardware of a computer?
The Bios might jam and need to be reset if you are starting and restarting your computer to many times in quick session. Not to mention the Factory settings may not have all the equipment you are using activated in the BIOS which could make it look like your now deactivated equipment "isn't working"
Any time you power up is always potentially Dangerous for the Computer which is why most professional computers are never Powered down so there is no risk of frying the equipment on start up. Brown outs and Power surges also cause equipment damage as does excessive heat, dust build up, and lack of circulation of air.... the last 3 being the main reason a Mother Board or a Video card or graphics card dies/fries
The only parts that really wears out from use are the moving parts like the CD/DVD Drives, Hard Drives, and Floppy/zip Drives
Thanks for the reply.
I have done 4 factory restores on a pc that is one year old. Just wondering if i could do alot of wear and tear this way.
Nah. Not unless the power goes out or there is a spike in the middle of the restore...which might crash the Hard disk at a critical moment.
Like to say the chances of a problem happening when restoring are slim as being struck by lightning, but I have been struck by lightning...lol (Well, missed me by that much *pinches thumb and index to almost touching*)
I would suggest using a ups for that.
So no wear and tear, thx for the tip.
I may be wrong, but I thought some of the new computers with vista came with some migration software and cable. If it didn't just take a look at the other posts, they got some good ideas.
Not sure about new computers coming with transfer cables and software, but of everything suggested in this and other threads.
I would go with Foambrush's suggestion - way easier.
I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use. -Galileo Galilei
I took a second look at the topic of this post and it should be labeled:
"Need to transfer data to new computer"
Trying to import your program file folder into a new PC is fraught with difficulties, and not one I even attempt.
Maybe it's possible with some programs, as long as you imported the registry to the new computer, but I'm fairly certain that licensed programs tie themselves to your computer's SSID.
One of the main reasons why people want to try and clean viruses when a new install and a data transfer would be easier and less time consuming is that they don't want to reinstall the programs.
Or that somehow, they never had the media to install the programs in the first place...
Which is rather cyclical, as that also appears to be the same reason why they got the virus/worm/etc.
I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use. -Galileo Galilei
If both computers have usb ports/hubs, the easiest solution would be to get some Flash drives or jump drive converters that use flash memory cards.
The price has come down enough where you could get a couple of flash drives for the same anout as the Hard disk encloser or the cost of peering software.
Cutting the Photos to a CD or DVD (depending on if you havedrive that can record on the main computer) is a siple as drag and drop in XP and cds not only make good back up storage but they are like 10 cents to 30 cents each for a cd and a $1ish for a DVD-/+ nowadays and can usually hold a thousand pictures per CD (depending on size and format of pictures of course) and a DVD will hold 50,000ish
In fact just found a backup Pictures Cd-r from 3 years ago and I was going through it like "oh wow, i don't remember making this back up"...lol (One of like 7 same exact backups for about a $1 total cost)
you want something like this
makes for easy transfers
"To err is human--and to blame it on a computer is even more so."
-. --- / -. . .-- / -.-. --- -.. . ... / ... - --- .--. / .- ... -.- .. -. --.
I've been wondering for a pretty long time why something like that didn't exist but i'm glad to find that it does. I'm gonna get me one of those.
uhm, do both computers have ether ports? why not just get a patch cable (an ether cable that directly connects two computers, I believe the same term applys to serial cables that do the same (though they are also called 'null')), about $20-30 at Circuit City, and cut-paste the pictures into a shared folder. Walah!......
also, depending on the value of the data you have, you might want to buy yourself 2 hard drives and configure the RAID 5 on your new motherboard. Or you could just get one extra HD and set up RAID 0.
This one is easy.
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2020-OTB&cpc=SCH
I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use. -Galileo Galilei
Hi Cobra.
I only have moment but here's a couple of suggestions for you to research.
I would possibly look into investing the money for an external hard drive. This would allow you more security in saving the photos in the event that you have complete hard drive crash on the new comp. It would be less drain on the comp's resources as well.
You could establish a peer to peer connection or workgroup if you're behind a router (hub, switch) and share the folder(s) to the other computer.
Possibly try an image and high compression software (we use Symantec Ghost) to maybe transfer the photos on separate media. I'm not sure what free utilities exist for that...
Good luck.
I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use. -Galileo Galilei
Actually, I have all the edited photos on an external. I wanted to retrieve the raw photos & editing programs off the old drive. I was looking for a way to skip a step, like link both PC's together because my old PC only has a 1.2 USB port so it'll take a long time to transfer.
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One more thing.
I'm guessing that you now have a SATA drive instead of PATA IDE. There should still be an IDE connection on the mobo, or if not, there are relatively inexpensive PCI cards to connect to an IDE.
Try hooking it up and see if the BIOS can see it and keep you primary boot drive set to the SATA. You should be able to see the old drive on My Computer.
No need to set the pins to slave.
I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use. -Galileo Galilei