I got several emails about transferring files from old computers to new Christmas computers recently.   They wanted to know the best/easiest/least expensive way to move old, but still important files onto the new computer.

First — don’t move your program files.  For instance you don’t want to transfer a game to your new computer, primarily because it won’t work.  Programs must be installed on your new computer because when a program installs, it writes information in many places on your computer that you don’t know about.  Without just one small bit of that information it won’t work.  So gather all those CDs you threw in a drawer somewhere and start installing them on your new computer; when you have plenty of time.

The data files or files that you have created using those programs, can be transferred to your new computer a number of ways.  These are files like photos, the book you are writing, drawings, scans, poetry, etc.

An easy way is to copy them to CDs or DVDs with your burners (hopefully both computers have one).  Next, copy the files from the CD or DVD to the new computer.  One CD can hold a lot of info (about 700 MB) and a DVD can hold about 7 times that (4.7 GB).  This is an easy, fairly inexpensive way but it will take a while. 

If you don’t have a burner you can use a flash drive in the same way as a CD or DVD transfer.  Depending on size one of these could hold more files than a DVD.

Another way is to purchase an USB file transfer cable (under $25) if both computers have USB ports.  You then link the two computers together using the cable and XP’s transfer program.  If one computer has XP on it, it will allow you to copy the program to the other computer on a floppy disk.  Go to ALL PROGRAMS / ACCESSORIES / SYSTEM TOOLS / FILE AND SETTINGS TRANSFER WIZARD and follow the wizard’s instructions.

Also, with the price of external hard drives down well below $200 they could also be an option for your data files.  Copy them to the external drive and copy them back to the new computer’s drive.  Then use the external drive for backups or with MojoPac (mentioned last week).

Advanced users could install the old hard drive into the new computer and drag files to the new drive.  Wipe the old one clean and leave it for more storage.  BEWARE!  This will most likely void your warranty!  If you have the computer built locally, ask the tech to do it for you…it will be worth the additional cost. 

No matter which way you go you will need to be organized in locating the files you want transferred and do not select files you do not really need.  This could be a good time to perform some file spring cleaning.

Tags: computer help, doyle, new computer, newspaper column, old computer, Ron Doyle, Transferring Files

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 5:55 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.