How do I transfer files from one computer to another?

[Stofsk]

Let's say I have a new computer. It has 80 GB hdd, and I'm jumping for joy as now I have a new place to put my porn collection. However, all of that happens to be in the laptop. So how do I get it from the laptop to the PC?

1. Floppies. Uh, no.
2. CD-RW/DVD-RW. In a stab of irony, my new PC will have a DVD-RW, but the laptop doesn't. And no, I'm not gonna blow money on getting a CD-RW/DVD-RW for a laptop which, strictly speaking, isn't mine.
3. Upload to the internet, download to the other computer. Did this before, had to rely on other people's generosity and patience. But now the size of my files have increased. Before I could upload 600 MB onto the guy's server, but now... I have more.
4. Serial cable. I've seen this done before, but I don't know how to do it nor do I have a serial cable.
5. Network? I don't know how.
6. USB Drives. Again, I'd like to blow money on one, but don't really want to.

Also, how do I go about connecting my new PC to the internet? I would like to be able to play over the net with my new PC while my mother uses the laptop to browse the web. How do I do it?

You guys rock btw. Thanks for any help you can give.

So what can I do?

[Darth Wong]

Open up a hex editor. Now load up the files you want to transfer. Write down all of the hexadecimal values you see onscreen. You may have to hit "page down" a few billion times.

Then go to the other computer and type in all of those values. Presto, you've transferred all of your data.

Be aware that this may take a little while, so you'll want to stock up on canned goods.

[Shinova]

Does the laptop have a CD drive? A DVD-RW should be able to write to CD-R/RWs.


Second, if you have a router or a switch, you could hook both comps to your LAN and enable file sharing.

[Uraniun235]

Do both computers have network cards? If so, you could wire them directly together with a crossover cable.

[Sharp-kun]

E-mail me all your porn and I'll burn it to disc and send it to you.

A flawless plan.

[Lord of the Farce]

Network? I don't know how.

Also, how do I go about connecting my new PC to the internet? I would like to be able to play over the net with my new PC while my mother uses the laptop to browse the web. How do I do it?

How do you get onto the internet right now? Dial-Up or Broadband (which means ADSL or Cable, here in Australia)?

[Plekhanov]

Stofsk do you have dial up or broadband?

Assuming its broadband the easiest thing to do is get a router something like this would do nicely (unless you don’t want Wifi then you can save a little). You then set up you home lan by plugging the cable/adsl modem into the router and then wire your computer into the router set up the wifi connection on the laptop and you should be good to go.

If you have dial up or want to say the price of the router you can network your 2 computers using a crossover cable and assuming you use windows use ICS (internet connection sharing) to well share the connection. The main downside if this arrangement is that the computer wired to the modem has to be on for the other PC to use the web.

In both these case you can easily copy your files to the new computer over the network.

[HemlockGrey]

Write down all of the hexadecimal values you see onscreen.

Wait, if you just randomly generated hexadecimal values for two or three thousand years, or some other ridicolously long span of time, could you come up with stuff like fully-working, playable games, enormous amounts of totally original porn, the complete works of Shakespeare in PDF format, etc. etc?

[Rye]

Network? I don't know how.
So what can I do?

If you don't have a hub/network router connected to your internet, and no network hubs around the house, or network cables, buy a crossover cable from wherever you get your computer parts from.

The crossover cable is like a network cable, only it connects two computers directly. A network cable connects to a hub, router or switch, which connect to multiple computers. If you do have a hub either in your router or seperate, buy 2 network cables.

Find the ports the network/crossover connects to (RJ 45, I think they're called if you want to google beforehand), if you've got a recent motherboard/laptop, it's likely there's one built in. If there isn't, buy a network card from your computer place (they don't cost that much), for the PC and laptop respectively, assuming your laptop has a PCMCIA slot where a network card can go.

Then either connect them straight to one another via the crossover cable you bought or connect them both to a hub/router via network cables.

Install any drivers you got with the network cards, and go on network neighbourhood properties. Then click on your connection in there, tick/install file and printer sharing.

Once that's done with, go to the porn folder (or whatever you want to share) and right click on it. Go on sharing, share the folder on the network. Go to the computer you want to copy stuff to and go on the network neighbourhood (actually, it's "My network places" in XP) and hopefully the shared folder should appear right in there. Sometimes it doesn't, though, and this can be got around by going to the address bar and typing "//[porn computer's name, like "stofsk"]" and it will show all the folders shared on that machine.

Then it's merely an issue of going in that folder and copying and pasting.

[Guy N. Cognito]

First thing I need to know is what OS you are running on both computers.
Do you have a hub, router, switch?
If no to the above questions, do you have a crossover cable.

With this information, I can walk you through the rest of the process, with no real issues.

[namdoolb]

I wouldn't bother with serial cable. My experience of it is that the transfer rate is abyssmal, and you'll probably be measuring the time taken to copy your files across in days.

Here's an innovative, but rather risky solution, that I'd call absolute last ditch if you don't mind voiding the warranty on your laptop. You could open it up, and connect the laptop HD directly to your new PC. This is obviously not without it's risks, as opening up a laptop is not something that should be undertaken lightly, or probably at all

Being serious now, network cable. And that's already been pretty much covered.

In fact, you may have all the stuff you need already.... You obviously have cable modem or ASDL, but how does that connect to your PC? chances are it's USB, but they may have also supplied an ethernet cable if you're on a cable modem. And if I recall correctly, most cable modems use crossover cable to connect to the PC.

[sketerpot]

Ignore the hex editor suggestion. It will take you much less time if you Base64 encode your files and then transcribe that.

Seriously, if you can get them both on a network with a crossover cable, you have some options. You could set up an FTP server on the computer with the files you want to transfer, find out its IP address with the command line "ipconfig", and then download via FTP from the computer you want to transfer the files to.

[The Dude]

Wait, if you just randomly generated hexadecimal values for two or three thousand years, or some other ridicolously long span of time, could you come up with stuff like fully-working, playable games, enormous amounts of totally original porn, the complete works of Shakespeare in PDF format, etc. etc?

It's possible, but prepare to wait. Since each hex digit has 16 possible values, the number of possible combinations for a file of X bytes (2 hex per byte) is 2 ^ (8*X), or 256 ^ X. At 10 bytes you're looking at over 10^24 combinations. At 1Kb, you're looking at 10^2400. Even if there are absolutely astronomical numbers of "interesting" combos, you will be waiting many, many times longer than the life of our universe for even the likes of a good dirty limerick, or Pong.

[Batman]

The networking solutions are propably the easier ones, but if those aren't available, I suggest getting a 2.5in to3.5in IDE HDD adapter.
Those are reasonably cheap (10-15 Bucks tops) and allow you to connect the laptop's IDE drive to your new PC.

[Uraniun235]

Write down all of the hexadecimal values you see onscreen.

Wait, if you just randomly generated hexadecimal values for two or three thousand years, or some other ridicolously long span of time, could you come up with stuff like fully-working, playable games, enormous amounts of totally original porn, the complete works of Shakespeare in PDF format, etc. etc?

Somebody brought up a similar concept at SA's SH/SC forum in the form of randomly generating 640x480 black and white pictures, and it was concluded that it would still be near-impossible to do such a thing.

Although the fantasy is quite alluring.

[Darth Fanboy]

Wait, if you just randomly generated hexadecimal values for two or three thousand years, or some other ridicolously long span of time, could you come up with stuff like fully-working, playable games, enormous amounts of totally original porn, the complete works of Shakespeare in PDF format, etc. etc?

You start now, and we'll come and check on you in about, well its going to be a while.

[darthdavid]

Open up a hex editor. Now load up the files you want to transfer. Write down all of the hexadecimal values you see onscreen. You may have to hit "page down" a few billion times.

Then go to the other computer and type in all of those values. Presto, you've transferred all of your data.

Be aware that this may take a little while, so you'll want to stock up on canned goods.

Actually, If he just copied and pasted into a text file...

[Vertigo1]

If you can't crimp your own crossover cable, what you can do is just get an in-line RJ-45 coupler (looks like this), open it up and criss-cross the TX and RX wires. You can look at the pinouts here. This will turn your in-line coupler into an in-line crossover coupler, which will allow you to use two ethernet cables to connect both machines together via networking. This is alot cheaper than buying a network hub.