Copying Files from Old PC to New

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Hi to all on this forum…

Please forgive what might seem like a pretty basic question, but it’s not basic for me. The situation is that I have a friend who has a very old computer (no USB ports, no network card, no CD burner, etc.) that runs WIndows 98. She just bought a new PC that runs Windows XP. She wants to transfer the data (not the apps) from the old PC to the new one. The new one doesn’t have a floppy drive. The good news is that she doesn’t have all that much data.

Is there a relatively simple method of making some sort of connection between the machines and getting the data on to the new one? Low cost and simplicity are both factors…

Thanks in advance for any suggestions…

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Hey, hey Homeboy! How yiz doin’ ? (A)

Do both computers have access (separately) to the internet, or can that be arranged? The reason I ask that is they can be easily in touch with one another via one of the VNC-type programs most of which are free. The one I’m presently using between my son and me is TightVNC: Free Remote Control because it also has FILE TRANSFER capability that many other flavors do not. It was very easy to set up on each machine. Let me know if this sounds possible.

(A) As my Lounge profile says, I’m a New Yorker by birth and lived in your area for several years of my youth. Flatbush Avenue was one of the places where my father was a Super. We later moved to the Island though. Nice talkin’ to ya!

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And howdy back to you, Big Al. I grew up in Manhattan (where my father was also a super, in a building that had a coal furnace), but my wife and I have lived in Park Slope since 1987, and before that we lived in Clinton Hill (part of Fort Green). We loved Brooklyn from the first and we really enjoy living here.

Regarding your question, unfortunately she has only one connection to the Internet. But what occurs to me as I write this is that perhaps she and I can set up a VNC so I can get her files and then send them to her on the new PC. She may not be entirely comfortable with sending her files to me, though, so that isn’t a solution that we can count on.

I was thinking more about just connecting the two computers directly and transferring the data from the old to the new. I’m pretty sure she’s gonna dump the old computer once the new one has all the data, so there’s no need for any kind of sophistication, just some sort of approach to get the files from one computer to the other.

Thanks for your suggestion, though. And come on back to Brooklyn anytime…

Regards,

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Well, I’d give her the question to see if she’s willing to try it. Hopefully, she’ll trust your “discretion” enough to give it a whirl.

The old standby, direct cable connect (DCC) will probably require the purchase of a cable, but that shouldn’t be too expensive these days if you can’t find someone who already has one. Here’s two Microsoft articles that talk about the process, first for Win98 and then for WinXP:

How to Install and Configure the Direct Cable Connection Feature

How To Set Up a Direct Cable Connection Between Two Computers in Windows XP

A Google for cable connect site:microsoft.com will show you other hits I got.

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Holy crap, I forgot to add to the last post that I was too young to remember the address, but we also used to live on 5th Avenue for awhile!

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Well, if you haven’t been back to Fifth Avenue in Park Slope for a while you probably wouldn’t recognize the place. It has evolved from, shall we say, seedy to hip and even exciting. There are still bodegas and hardware stores and other establishments that go back many a year, but there are also dozens of restaurants, bars and other attractions for young adults (and not-so-young adults). It’s become a destination restaurant row for locals and even for some farther away.

If you were from further south on Fifth Avenue, around Sunset Park, that neighborhood also has evolved. It has a different feel than Fifth Avenue nearer Flatbush, but if you want some great Mexican food or just the stimulation of walking through an ethnic neighborhood in full bloom, it’s the place to go.

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Another possibility might be to see if you can connect (temporarily) the Windows 98 disk into the new PC, and copy the data across at your leisure.

For that to happen there will need to be a spare power connector from the internal power supply and a data bus cable connector, and (probably) information which enables you to set the jumper on the W98 disk to ‘slave’ rather than ‘master’. (If the disk in the new computer has different connections at the back from those in the old computer, then you can reject this method.)

And you would need some confidence in playing with the internals of a computer!

John

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Hi John,

Thanks for the suggestion. Don’t know about the connections. I’ll take a look the next time I see her….

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I may be a bit late to add to this, but here’s my experience.

I needed to get data from a Win3.1 machine to a new XP. No floppy on the XP and no network on the 3.1

I took the hard drive out of the 3.1 and attached it to the XP. But the 3.1 HDD could not have its master / slave settings changed so insisted on being the boot disk. (22 seconds start up was amazing!!) The 3.1 disk could see the XP disk, so I was able to copy and paste the data. I then turned it off and removed the 3.1 HDD and rebooted with XP.

All fine and dandy now

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Expanding on what JohnGray said, you/she could buy an external drive enclosure for less than $30. That way you/she would only have to open the old PC to remove the HD.

Joe

--Joe

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Don’t bother with hard drives – for $10 or so you can buy 128 MB or 256 MB USB Flash (or Jump, or whatever) drive!
Insert it to USB port on one computer, copy all files you want and move the drive to another computer. It doesn’t matter USB version, but v.1 is a little bit slower which is not critical.

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I think George said they had no USB ports on the old PC…

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Brookboy mentioned that the Win98 PC doesn’t have USB ports, so he’d need a USB / Serial or USB / Parallel adapter too.

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Gee, perhaps I’m losing it finally, but the simplest solution would seem to be to install the HDD from the old PC in the new PC set as “Slave” and then simply drag & drop whatever files you want to transfer over to the new “Master” HDD.

Jeff

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perhaps I’m losing it finally

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post 626,050

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I thought of that, wondered if there might be something even simpler.

A friend at work suggested she get a gmail account and then upload her data to the account. Apparently the gmail space limitations are huge. Hadn’t thougth of that…

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Hate to add another alternative to the mix, but since you said the data volume isn’t too large, she could always copy the data files to floppy on her old computer, bring them to YOU and you could probably burn them to a CD for her to copy onto the new computer. That way, two of you present at the time, there would be little to no sensitivity to handling of her “personal” files. All of my thoughts were designed with the novice in mind, who doesn’t want to take the computer apart. Obviously, pulling the old hard drive out and putting it in the new computer is an excellent idea.

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I thought of that, wondered if there might be something even simpler.

A friend at work suggested she get a gmail account and then upload her data to the account. Apparently the gmail space limitations are huge. Hadn’t thougth of that…

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Huh? What could be simpler and/or faster than plugging the old HDD into the new case and then copying files directly from it to the new HDD? I would be that one could hookup the old HDD faster than one could get and configure a gmail account, never mind having to upload megs or gigs of files to the online storage and then downloading them. Doesn’t seem logical to me!

Jeff

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I ‘m sorry, but I have to laugh at all of this. You guys who are all “experts” with a screwdriver and a computer forget that we may be talking about someone who isn’t! Have a little empathy guys…

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You’re right, Al. Many computer users (me included) would rather not fiddle too much with the interior of a PC.

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The IntelliMover file transfer program looks like a good bet. It even transfers settings from the old computer to the new one, works across operating systems, and can be done with a parallel cable or between network cards (since you don’t have a USB on the old computer). If you try this, let me know how it goes. I’m asked this question fairly often and would love to give them an easy to implement option.

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You can avoid cracking the case on the new system and not worry about internal cables by getting a USB 2.0 to IDE Adapter. They’re very inexpensive and operate a drive outside the case using the USB interface for data transfer.

You will, of course, still have to remove the drive from the old PC’s case.

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I couldn’t understand how the drive gets power without the external enclosure, but I see from this other brand that there is a separate power cable. If you have to access a lot of drives and have a clean work area, this seems more convenient than using an enclosure. And potentially more “universal” (handles both regular and notebook-sized drives).

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I thought the product I linked to was pretty clear about it requiring and containing a power adaptor and cable.

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Sorry, I didn’t absorb them from the text, not until I saw a picture.

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