How do I move a huge file from one comp to another. My ISP says the thing is too large to keep in a mailbox. Are there any free web storage sites that don’t require a credit card? I also don’t have a zip drive.
Are these two computers near each other? Do they have network cards?
If your ISP is saying it’s too big for the mailbox, then it’s still on their server, not on your computer.
Therefore, if you connect the second computer to the Internet in some fashion and use whatever software you use to download your mail (or, if it’s Web mail, just use your browser) to download this file to the new computer, that could work.
Take a look at this page. It’s a listing of a bunch of free programs that will split your file into chunks. Then you can send the chunks separately (via e-mail or whatever) and reassemble them on the other end.
PKZip or Winzip (which everyone should already have, anyway) both do spanning across floppy diskettes. If both are on the Internet, MS NetMeeting (which is pretty ubiquitous) does file transfers, but the floppies will be faster if either PC is on a dial-up connection. There are dozens of other programs which will also work, but the two I mentioned are the best-supported ones out there (and likely to already be installed on both PCs)
Yahoo Briefcase gives you 25 Megs of free storage online.
But, Friedo’s question was the important one. Do they have network cards? If not, you could even do a null modem/IPX (serial cable) transfer. Both would be faster than uploading and then downloading your stuff.
aol instantmessanger will allow transfer of files - but both computers have to be working together.
Also I have used myspace.com they will give you 300 mb of storage but I don’t know if they are still around.
Why don’t you just burn a CD?
Oh. OK, not everyone has one of those, I guess.
Umm, to reiterate what ZipperJJ said, where the heck is the file now? ISP’s do not generally inform you about crowding problems on your own hard drive.
If, nevertheless, the file is on your local hard drive but on the wrong computer, network your computers. No one ever says “Gee, I’m sorry I went to the trouble of networking my computers”. Get a crossover cable and plug it into the Ethernet ports and set up file sharing. PC or Mac?
AppleTalk is simple. Turn File Sharing on. Enable guest access. Mount hard drive of computer A on computer B’s desktop via the Chooser, using AppleShare. Drag 'n drop the file from one computer’s HD to the other’s.
NetBEUI on a PC isn’t too bad either, but you do have to create a Workgroup and put both computers on it, and the protocol itself may not be active until you turn it on via Network in Control Panels. Share a folder and do a drag-n-drop after locating computer B via Network Neighborhood from computer A.
Or, if you wanna feel like a geek, enable FTP services on one computer and ftp the files from the other. On a Mac, you can use freeware NCSA Telnet (from NCSA’s web site), which doubles as an FTP server (go to Edit:Preferences, believe it or not). On a PC, also simple, I just don’t do Windows often enough to remember the procedure that enables it.
Mmmm, OK, maybe you don’t have ethernet on your computers? Major bummers. Don’t suppose you’d take this as a good hint that all computers oughta have ethernet? All right never mind. No Zip drive either (sigh). You got, perhaps, a floppy drive? (No insult intended: I don’t have one myself, Macs don’t come with floppy drives these days). As sewak said, grab yourself a copy of WinZip and use it to compress your files; save them to empty floppy disks. As one floppy fills up, you’ll be prompted to insert the next (it will span the archive across floppies). Floppies are unreliable (and have been since hi-density came out) so be prepared to delete everything and start over if necessary.
The fastest (but not simplest way) to do the transfer is to take the hard drive out of the computer with the file on it and put it in the computer that you want to transfer the file to. Of course, they must have the same hard drive interface (IDE or SCSI) and you must set the second hard drive to slave. Once it is in you can boot up and very quickly copy the file over to the other hard drive, because it will be a hard drive to hard drive transfer. Then again, if you don’t want to take the case off your computer then uh, ya gotta go with one of the above mentioned methods. Or you could be adventerous like me and take all of your computer motherboards out and lay them on your desk so swapping parts is always quick 
Bad idea if you drink near your computer though…
Oh yeah, if you don’t have Ethernet on both boxes, but you’re using Mac computers (probably pretty elderly ones if that is the case), go to Radio Shack or CompUSA and get LocalTalk connectors and connect the computers though the printer ports. Again, turn AppleTalk on, and set up networking as described for Ethernet. (if you don’t have Ethernet, the settings will default to LocalTalk so you won’t have to mess with settings). Once your 25 MB worth of files have started to copy, go out for a night on the town or go to bed and check back hours later, LocalTalk is slow.
Oh, maybe you have one Mac and one PC? Nasty unless you have Ethernet on bogth boxes. If you have Ethernet, use FTP to move the files. If you don’t, …ugh. If the Mac is new enough to be using ATA hard drives rather than SCSI, rip the PC hard drive out of the PC, install it in the Mac (setting the Mac HD aside) and boot from something bootable. If the Mac has no other medium from which it can boot (you said no Zip. SyQuest? Bernoulli? Floptical? Travan tape, even? CDROM is okay but you’ll need a second device to store the PC files on), ignore this advice and don’t rip the HD from the PC ater all. Otherwise, boot the Mac from alternative medium (make sure you have File Exchange Control Panel in the System Folder of the bootable medium) and then you can copy the files from the PC hard drive to a Mac destination folder.
You can start your own free webpage at Tripod, upload the file from one computer, then download it from the other, and finally, cancel the account with Tripod.
You could also download a copy of Alex’s FTP server from Son of Spys freeware site (less than 1 Meg) and transfer the file through the Internet.
–Nut
When life gives you a lemon, say ‘Lemons? I like lemons. What else have you got?’