Cheapest & easiest way to move about 30gb of media from one computer to another?

ajh2298

ajh2298

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I am looking into getting a new computer in the next few weeks for myself and I would need to move some photos, music(iTunes), and some digital copies of movies from my older computer to the newer one. If I add all the data up it comes to about 30gb of stuff to move over. Is there a cheap and easy way I can do this it seems a external hard drive might be overkill and I dont think they make USB Drives any bigger than 16gb. If it matters both computers can be running right next to each other if needed to and my old computer is running Windows XP(sp3).

Thanks for any help in advance,
ajh2298
 
You can get larger flash drives, but what is different from using that then from an external drive in your case?

Either way, external HD would be quickest/easiest probably.

But if you have both computers connected to the net, you could make a torrent file of all the stuff you want to transfer and just send the torrent to your other computer and download, depending on your speed this can be rather quick.
 
Assuming both PCs take the same hard drive connection (SATA to SATA) or (IDE to IDE), then the easiest thing is just to take the hard drive out of the old computer and install it into the new one as a secondary drive. Then transfer the files and move the drive back to the old PC.
 
when you get the new computer, put the hard drive from the old computer in the new computer and copy the files over, then take the drive out and put it back.

edit: Emiroo beat me to it :)

[quote name='Emiroo']Assuming both PCs take the same hard drive connection (SATA to SATA) or (IDE to IDE).[/QUOTE]

also, most newer motherboards have both SATA and IDE, so you'll probably be fine, even if your old drive is IDE
 
Once I bought a two way ethernet cord and just directly connected both computers to each other to form a local network and transferred it from one computer to another. It was relatively easy and relatively cheap since I just needed a certain type of ethernet cord.

I'm sure someone who is more computer savvy can elaborate.
 
[quote name='CheapLikeAFox']I'm sure someone who is more computer savvy can elaborate.[/QUOTE]

Thats my problems is I am not to computer savvy and I also have bad luck when I try this types of things. I am always the person who calls tech support and they also tell me "I have never had that happen before".

Also if I would need to open up the tower to hook up the older hard drive would that not void out any warrenty I would have on the new PC?
 
[quote name='ajh2298']Thats my problems is I am not to computer savvy and I also have bad luck when I try this types of things. I am always the person who calls tech support and they also tell me "I have never had that happen before".

Also if I would need to open up the tower to hook up the older hard drive would that not void out any warrenty I would have on the new PC?[/QUOTE]


Honestly, I think you should try the ethernet way first.

It's usually as simple as connecting both computers through an ethernet cable and letting windows guide you into networking them together.

So it should be relatively easy and the transfer speeds are good.

I ran into a problem personally since none of my old ethernet cords seemed to work. I went to a computer store and they sold me a "two-way" cord - I thought all ethernet cords were/are the same - but it was less than ten bucks and I got home and windows used that cable to network both computers real easily.

I'm thinking I had some old cords that had problems and the computer geeks just fed me some simplified BS to get me to buy a new cord, but it worked.
 
[quote name='CheapLikeAFox']Honestly, I think you should try the ethernet way first.

It's usually as simple as connecting both computers through an ethernet cable and letting windows guide you into networking them together.

So it should be relatively easy and the transfer speeds are good.

I ran into a problem personally since none of my old ethernet cords seemed to work. I went to a computer store and they sold me a "two-way" cord - I thought all ethernet cords were/are the same - but it was less than ten bucks and I got home and windows used that cable to network both computers real easily.

I'm thinking I had some old cords that had problems and the computer geeks just fed me some simplified BS to get me to buy a new cord, but it worked.[/QUOTE]

you need a crossover cable or a hub / router to do this.
 
[quote name='mang9432']you need a crossover cable or a hub / router to do this.[/QUOTE]


Ah, there we go, they sold me a crossover cable then, thanks!

Looking at newegg you can get a crossover cable for less than 10 bucks. I would either do that or buy a cheaper flash drive (4-8GB) and just do multiple transfers of individual files until they all were transferred over.

The flash drive might be more useful in the future. The crossover cable might be more convenient.
 
I was going to get a 16gb flash drive and just do 2-3 transfers. But I was worried about the speed of the transfers I dont even know if the USB ports on my old computer are the faster 2.0 ones the computer is 5+ years old.
 
[quote name='ajh2298']I was going to get a 16gb flash drive and just do 2-3 transfers. But I was worried about the speed of the transfers I dont even know if the USB ports on my old computer are the faster 2.0 ones the computer is 5+ years old.[/QUOTE]


Well, it's going to take a while to transfer, even with a hard drive, and the time is going to be the same whether you do it all at one time or in chunks since the USB port dictates that, so that should be the least of your concerns.
 
well, if you dont want to tinker with swapping HDDs, networking and such, id either go with the flash drive, you can get a 16gb reliable brand for around $30-40 these days and it will be pretty easy, and probably take a couple of hours.

OR

you can buy a 50 pack of dvdroms for about $10 bucks at almost any store and just burn them to dvd and swap them. this will be a little bit longer, but it will definitely be cheaper, and im sure your familiar with burning.
 
Just "borrow" an external hard drive from Best Buy for thirty days (photocopy that receipt!).:lol: Walmart is 90 days I think.

Forget about flash drives, they are extremely slow in writing data.
 
[quote name='Actionhank']Just "borrow" an external hard drive from Best Buy for thirty days (photocopy that receipt!).:lol: Walmart is 90 days I think.

Forget about flash drives, they are extremely slow in writing data.[/QUOTE]

I just transferred about 500GB of movies which took hours and that was with both hard drives in the same computer. Although this would be the fastest method, you didn't want to open your towers so forget about it. For 30GB, i would just use an external drive if you won't use it very much or want to return it to Bestbuy or wherever. The trouble I have with returning is not taking advantage of the policy, but you need to wipe the drive cleanly if there's anything remotely personal on it to be safe. It doesn't sound like you know how to do this either. Flash drives in my experience are much slower.

My opinion is to buy the external and keep it. It never hurts to have a backup of your media. Also don't over-buy the GB size since prices always come down.
 
[quote name='boneless']I just transferred about 500GB of movies which took hours and that was with both hard drives in the same computer. Although this would be the fastest method, you didn't want to open your towers so forget about it. For 30GB, i would just use an external drive if you won't use it very much or want to return it to Bestbuy or wherever. The trouble I have with returning is not taking advantage of the policy, but you need to wipe the drive cleanly if there's anything remotely personal on it to be safe. It doesn't sound like you know how to do this either. Flash drives in my experience are much slower.

My opinion is to buy the external and keep it. It never hurts to have a backup of your media. Also don't over-buy the GB size since prices always come down.[/QUOTE]

If privacy is a concern then use CCleaner's erasing tool. It's very easy to use.

If you want to go all out, then encrypt the data in a TrueCrypt container first, transfer it to the external drive. Then erase with CC cleaner. Heck you can leave the container there if you want, with a good AES password no one (within the most probable customer base of Walmart, unless the NSA shops there) will be able to break into it.

What kind of data are you transferring anyway? I doubt the next person who buys it will even care to use some data recovery tool just to get at the deleted pictures of your cat.

I mean Is that what you guys do when you buy a refurbished hard drive?
 
I ended up just buying a 320gb external hard drive from Amazon.com for $70.00 I figured it would be a nice item to have around.
 
Do you have a mp3 player? Use that as a external hard drive and transfer stuff over. You might need multiple trips if your player's hd is small.
 
[quote name='ajh2298']I ended up just buying a 320gb external hard drive from Amazon.com for $70.00 I figured it would be a nice item to have around.[/QUOTE]

If you don't have a specific need for it you can always set it up as a backup device for the new computer.
 
Mathematically...

eSATA Transfer Speed: 300MB/s. You need a SATA drive/external drive and an external SATA connector. Don't know if you have those.
SATA 3.0 (moving internal drives): 600MB/s

USB 2.0 (using a flash drive/external HD with USB connector): 60MB/s

Gigabit Ethernet, requiring crossover cable or a hub/router/switch and Gigabit outputs: 125MB/s

Wireless Ethernet, G: 13.2MB/s max
Wireless Ethernet, N: 37.5MB/s max

IEEE 1394a(most Firewire ports): 49MB/s
IEEE 1394b: 196.6MB/s
 
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