Best way to move files from desktop to laptop?

I have about 100 gigabytes of data I want to move to the new laptop.

The desktop is running Windows XP Professional. The laptop is running Vista
Home Premium.

Both have 802.11g.

What's the best way to do this?

William R. Cousert wrote:
I have about 100 gigabytes of data I want to move to the new laptop.

The desktop is running Windows XP Professional. The laptop is running Vista
Home Premium.

Both have 802.11g.

What's the best way to do this?



The fastest way is to remove the desktop drive and hook it up to the
laptop via USB. Second best is via file sharing on your wifi network.
I suppose you could also use a large-capacity thumb drive and
sneakernet. A shovel will not work. ;) ... Ben Myers

In ,
William R. Cousert typed on Fri, 3 Apr 2009 10:23:50 -0700:
I have about 100 gigabytes of data I want to move to the new laptop.

The desktop is running Windows XP Professional. The laptop is running
Vista Home Premium.

Both have 802.11g.

What's the best way to do this?

Well copying 100GB will take about 14 hours by 802.11g speeds I would
think. Let's see, say 4MB per second... 25,000 seconds... or about 7
hours. Using an USB2 hard drive is about 20 times faster. So it would
take about 30 minutes to copy to it. And another 30 minutes to copy from
it. So a hard drive should be much faster by 7 I am guessing.

Whether you use wireless or USB2, copy and dragging to another folder on
the network is easy under Explorer. That is all you need. It is all data
files right? Which means they are not being used by the OS or an open
application. And the one that is doing to copying needs the other
machine to have those folder(s) set as sharing.

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2

William R. Cousert,
If this is purely data files, and some backups from you XP machine, that you
plan to transfer over to the new machine. If you plan to repartition the HDD on
your Vista Machine, you need to make sure that you get all the Installation
CDs/DVDs for the Operating Systems, Drivers, and any other application that
comes "pre-installed" on your machine.

If the laptop came with a hidden restore partition, to restore back to "factory
specs", some repartitioning programs might break the process used to access this
partition, and it might be difficult at least, or impossible at most, to utilize
those files on that partition, if you want to restore the laptop to factory
specs.

1. Consider purchasing an external HDD, maybe in the 250 GB range. It can also
act as a backup location, if you your HDD, in either XP or Vista Machine.
Some can be found at:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...name=USB%202.0

After partitioning and formatting (if needed) the drive, I would do the
following:
a. "Copy" the files and folders that you want to move to Vista Machine, to
the external HDD. Don't "Move" them. Just in case something goes wrong, you
would have not lost them.
b. Now this may be a time to think, do you really need to have all that data
transferred to the new PC. Such as Tax records from a program that is on the XP
computer, but will not be installed on the new Vista PC. That you can't open
anyway. It might be better just to leave those files on the External HDD, and
only tap into them when needed. Basically keeping the Vista Machine "Lean &
Mean".
c. Then copy the "necessary" files and folders to the laptop, that you need
on a daily or on going basis.
d. Leave the rest on the external HDD. And use this device as a backup
location, connecting it to the laptop or PC when needed.

2. If you XP machine is attached to a network/router, that has an open LAN port?
Try the following.
a. After you get the laptop up and running, and connected to the router
using an Ethernet cable, not wirelessly, if you can help it .
1. You will need to make sure that the drives & folders on the XP are
set to be shared over the network.
b. "Copy" from the XP machine, not move the files to a folder directory, of
partition that you have created on the laptop.

3. When the transfer of files and folders is complete, and you are sure that you
got everything from the XP machine over to the laptop or external HDD, you can
consider deleting those files and folders from the XP machine. If you do not
need them there any more, on that machine. I would wait for 30 days or so, just
in case, you need to copy them again, because of an unseen problem that might
come up.

I know this is long winded explanation, but it should help in situation.

--
Have a Good Day,
Rich/rerat


"William R. Cousert" wrote in message
...
I have about 100 gigabytes of data I want to move to the new laptop.

The desktop is running Windows XP Professional. The laptop is running Vista
Home Premium.

Both have 802.11g.

What's the best way to do this?

On Fri, 3 Apr 2009 10:23:50 -0700, "William R. Cousert"
wrote:

I have about 100 gigabytes of data I want to move to the new laptop.

The desktop is running Windows XP Professional. The laptop is running Vista
Home Premium.

Both have 802.11g.

What's the best way to do this?


All things considered, I'd use an external usb drive to do this.
There are other ways but they'd take a long time unless you don't
care. You can do it over your network but probably best to do this
overnite due to the time it takes and performance hit on the network.

An easy way is to use a crossover cable. About 4 hours. Faster than wireless
but not as fast as USB.

On Apr 3, 7:23*pm, "William R. Cousert" wrote:
I have about 100 gigabytes of data I want to move to the new laptop.

The desktop is running Windows XP Professional. The laptop is running Vista
Home Premium.

Both have 802.11g.

What's the best way to do this?

You also try connecting both via with a wire (ethernet) to your router
and that should be faster than wireless. This is similar to what
BrianK was talking about although using the router you don't have to
worry about setting IP addresses.

I don't know what the speed difference would be though.

If you feel comfortable with removing the hard drive and doing it via
USB that would work.

If both computers have gigabit network cards then crossover would be faster
than usb. 1000Mb/s vs 480Mb/s (125MB/s vs 60MB/s). Those are theoretical
values of course but if you were getting 50MB/s (less than half the max
speed) your 100Gb would be done in ~35min, or on a 10/100 connection with
max theoretical speed of 12.5MB/s you would be done in 2hours20min. The
other benefit of using your lan is that you only have to copy once, from
source to destination, rather than source-temp-dest.

"Brian K" wrote in message
...
An easy way is to use a crossover cable. About 4 hours. Faster than
wireless but not as fast as USB.

I don't have Gigabit networking but I've read in this forum that an average
transfer speeds is 20 MB/sec.

I've tested 100 Mbit/sec networking transfer speed and it averages 9 to 10
MB/sec. USB2 transfer speed averages 25 to 27 MB/sec. USB1.x transfer speed
is 1 MB/sec.

I haven't tested Firewire transfer speed but a friend assures me it is
double USB2 speed.

On Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:19:25 GMT, "Brian K"
wrote:



I don't have Gigabit networking but I've read in this forum that an average
transfer speeds is 20 MB/sec.

I've tested 100 Mbit/sec networking transfer speed and it averages 9 to 10
MB/sec. USB2 transfer speed averages 25 to 27 MB/sec. USB1.x transfer speed
is 1 MB/sec.

I haven't tested Firewire transfer speed but a friend assures me it is
double USB2 speed.


I hear USB3 is around the corner grin tho that won't help here.