I’m trying to copy all my important stuff onto CD in order to transfer it to my new computer.
This requires that I highlight a bunch of folders or files, tell the computer to “copy” them, tell it to “paste” them onto the CD, and the after it finishes that operation, I must then tell it to actually write the files.
The problem is, after I do the copy-paste operation, I often forget about the subsequent “write” operation. (It takes about five to ten minutes for each copy-paste procedure, so I usually just leave the computer to go do something else while it copies.) This means I waste a bunch of time leaving the computer idle after it’s finished the paste but before I remember to tell it to actually write the thing.
So my question is, is there some way I can get the machine to write after it’s finished copying, without my having to go in and click “write these files to CD” every time?
The reason it does this is so if you make a mistake in what you copy and paste, you can correct it before you burn it to the CD, which unless it’s a CD-RW (which nobody uses,) can’t be corrected afterward. CD-R’s are cheap, but as you said, the process itself can be time consuming and you might not realize the mistake until you go to transfer the files from the CD.
But you really should just look into installing (if just temporarily) the old harddrive into the new PC. Must faster and easier in the long run. or, if you have a router, just send the files over the LAN.
how about an ethernet cable between the machines? Share a drive, then drag all the junk you want onto the other machine? Or, hell, use a thumb drive or a usb drive. Or an iPod mounted as a drive.
All of those things start copying stuff immediately, no second step.
Easier, maybe, but more costly, since I already have a ton of blank CDs lying around. (Plus my wife wants to mail all of our family photos and videos (this is the vast majority of what I am copying for the transfer) on CDs to various of her relatives for safekeeping. She is really paranoid about losing them.)
This is what I did last time. But this time, for reasons I guess I don’t need to get into, the house is going to be far too crowded with kids, pets and relatives for me to be able to get into the innards of a computer. It would be a disaster waiting to happen.
How long would it take to upload and download twenty gigabytes? I have a pretty fast DSL connection (I don’t know the details, it’s just the connection that came with our apartment).
Sort of. You’d want what’s called a crossover cable. Outwardly, it looks like a normal Ethernet cable (which also goes by the other names you mentioned), but the wires inside the jacket are crossed to allow a direct connection between two computers. Here is a quick guide for setting the PCs up to do this.
That will be the fastest way to transfer the files without actually opening up the computers. A crossover won’t cost you any more than a regular Ethernet cable - about $5-10.
Isn’t the most straightforward* method to move the files is to add the new computer to your home network and then share a folder on the old machine - it becomes visible to all machines on your network. In fact, you can probably share the root folder of each drive just so that everything is visible.
This assumes you have a router.
*I realize through many years of painful experience that nothing can be said to straightforward on a computer.
Is the “network card” probably the same as the one I use to connect my computer to the series of tubes that drops things on my desk? (Apologies for shameful ignorance.)
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