Transfering Files

I know to most of you this might come across and something obvious or well known.. But I know plenty of people that dont know of the many different methods of transferring data from one computer to another. Whether you just bought or inherited a new computer or if you need to just transfer data to another computer.

There are several forms of media that one can use based on how much space you have to transfer. Lets start with something small, a couple of word documents...

The easiest and cheapest method to transfer this data would be using the old conventional floppy diskette.

Now lets say you have a bit more data but a fairly new computer that you are replacing. The next easiest way would be to burn the data to a cd and replace it on your new computer.

Where it gets complicated is when you have lots of data and no cd burner in your old computer. There are multiple solutions to solve this dilemma. First and foremost you could email all the old data to yourself. This is very redundent and time consuming... Probably not a good solution. I highly recommend you zip (method of compressing the size of data) or raring the data (another form of compression). Both of these utilities are free and will save you valuable space when it comes time to backing up or transferring data.

Now once you have your data backed up you can figure out the solution you wish to use. Another possiblity is to use some other form of removable media... Zip Drive, Jazz Drive, USB drive...etc.
A zip drive is going to cost you about 100 US dollars for the drive and then roughly 5-10 USD for the Zip disk. These store 100mb probably sufficient for most users and far superior to a floppy disk. USB drives are smaller and are competitive in price to that of a zip disk. Dont limit your ideas either, if you have an mp3 player, or digital camera you can use those to transfer data, just dont try to listen to your old word docs next time you go to listen to music :p . (i.e. iPod allows you to store 20 gb of data/music on it great for transfering files too if you wanted)

Now lets say that you have gigabytes of information that you have to transfer to the new computer. You still have a lot of options to solve this problem. First you could take the old hard drive out of the old computer and insert it into the new one... Remove the old hard drive, change the jumper (small plastic piece on the back of the hard drive) to the "Slave" position (this varies on different hard drives but there should be a picture that shows you the proper position). Make sure your new hard drives jumper is in the Master position. Now this would work unless your new/old computer is a laptop. Then you would need an adaptor to connect your laptop hard drive (smaller) to the desktop. But for a novice this isnt a good solution.

If you have a hub/switch you can connect both computers to the device and manually set IP address' on them. You can find this option in the Network settings. Set one computers IP to 192.168.1.2 (new computer) and set the other to 192.168.1.3 (old computer). (This is assuming you have no other computers on the network) Once you have them connected you have to create a share. If you are running windows 9x you have to first allow file and print sharing. (located in network options) then create a folder on your desktop and right click it, go to properties and then sharing. Create a share name and allow sharing on the old computer (Lets say we called is share for demonstartion purposes). Drag any files you want to copy over into this new folder.
On the new computer go to start run and type in "\\192.168.1.2\share" without the quotes. this will connect your new computer to the old one by using your hub or switch. now drag whatever files you want over to the new computer and they are now transfered over.

If you dont own a hub or switch the easiest and cheapest method is to purchase a crossover cable and plug it into both computers NIC and follow the same steps that you would for the Hub/Switch.

These are some of the many different ways that you can backup or transfer data from one computer to another.

Different methods (listed again)
Floppy diskette
Zip Drive/Disk
Usb drive (Pen Drive)
Digital Camera media
MP3 Player media
Moving the Hard drive
Hub
Switch
Crossover cable
[edit: I was reminded I forgot cdr/w and dvdr/w, 2 more solutions ;)]

Hope this helps
~Spy

Nicely written. I often use all of those methods depending on the cirumstances.

I normally suggest people to keep their old hard drive(s) when they are replacing their computer with a newer one or upgrading. I do this for serveral reasons...

it gives them more space and they can access their old files

after you have migrated your files, it is good for backup purposes

people who find old computers and hard drives and have the knowhow can access all your personal info, unless you have shreaded it good enough... and that isn't fullproof.