Fastest PC to PC data transfer?

R-evans

R-evans

R-evans

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A mate's folks have just bought a new PC and the entire family are clueless so have asked me to help move all their data from the old PC to the new.

I've never done this before, I have only moved the HDD over to the new PC but they want to give the old PC away so can't do that. Also cant just do a HDD to HDD copy as they want the new operating system. So it is just a case of moving around 400GB of photos, music, etc.

Is ethernet the fastest way? Just seen the link below.
http://www.tufitech.com/how-to/fastest-way-to-transfer-files-from-pc-to-pc/

Any help appreciated.

Cheers
 
Put the old drive in the new PC as extra drive, copy across, blat the old drive, jobs a goodun.

Other than that either hook up PC's to ethernet on router if they have one or use external HDD.
 
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I have a 1TB drive with enough space but just thought two lots of 400GB transfer at USB2 speed would take forever.

If the Ethernet is as fast as the link says, it'll just be one transfer at much higher speeds. How does the router help over connecting the two directly?
 
R-evans said:
I have a 1TB drive with enough space but just thought two lots of 400GB transfer at USB2 speed would take forever.

If the Ethernet is as fast as the link says, it'll just be one transfer at much higher speeds. How does the router help over connecting the two directly?
Click to expand...

If you have a spare switch or they have a router with ethernet then do that - be done in no time.

USB2 transfer will take a while but I'd still whip out the old drive and put in the new PC - far far quicker.
 
Was considering putting the HDD in the new system but their old PC is one of them weird micro systems they use to have in schools so couldn't be bothered opening it up :p

Think I'll just use the ethernet through router option.

Cheers guys
 
Back in the day we'd use a crossover Ethernet cable and put static IP addresses on each NIC in the same subnet 1.0.0.1 and 1.0.0.2 usually. Then use Windows file sharing to access source files from the target machine and pull them across. These days I think gigabit NICs are auto sensing so a straight through cable would also work.
 
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