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General discussion

Transfer Data from Old PC to New

Aug 22, 2011 4:35PM PDT

Hi,

I need to transfer data from my old pc with the old style cables (vga?) to my new pc with usb. Is there a connector I can buy that will enable me to download the data onto a flashdrive directly. The old pc has a cd drive, so installation of a driver is possible.

Thanks in advance.

V.Green

Discussion is locked

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Re: transfer data
Aug 22, 2011 5:16PM PDT

VGA is for monitors only. So it can't be VGA. If you tell what it is (I assume it isn't USB) we might be able to tell more.

Other questions:
- how old is that old PC?
- what OS?
- how much data?
- how do you backup that data?

Kees

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Look into...
Aug 22, 2011 10:26PM PDT

If your old PC is that old, it maybe better to remove the old HD. Mount it in a ext. USB case that accepts it and go from there. You can also use this setup, google for ADA-2020. It will accept various EIDE and SATA type drives which all you need then is to connect as required. Either method will work, once configured and swap data. FYI- you swap data not the whole OS like pgms., and such it would do for XP and above OSes. I have used the ADA-2020 quite well and works.

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Transfering
Aug 23, 2011 8:36AM PDT

I wrote a large article with images and explanations of each piece of hardware and connection. I dont feel like going over the same thing again so here is a brief overview of my advise.

First of all, chances are you have an IDE hard drive. I doubt that its old enough to be DB25. The likely connections that I could see are:

IDE
Serial ATA

However the following may confuse you:

SCSI
Raid Array (Whether its IDE, ATA, SCSI)

Some people have built machines using adapters to use Laptop Hard Drives, this may also be an issue.

Furthermore I've seen some people even use SD cards, Express Bus,PCMCIA (Rare) with adapters when on a budhet and using spare parts,

My advice.

1. Find the type of Hard drive and buy an enclosure for it. They are $15-25 dollars and can be connected via USB, Firewire, ISCSI etc.

2. If the old machine is operable you can either shhare the drive on the nework or use a crossover to connect both machines. Set PC1 to static IP 192.168.1.1 and PC2 to 192.168.1.2 and then eplore your network or use: net use z: \\ 192.168.1.x

Further more you could click start, run, type the IP or DNS name and add the hard-drive by mapping it and doing a transfer over night.

The easiest of all is simply buying an enclosure. For future reference I highly suggest purchasing either a 1TB external for backups or a file server like a Terrastation.

Cheers