How to Transfer data Between two hard drives

Do you have a lot of information on one hard drive that you would like to transfer to another? Have you bought a new computer but want all of your information from the old one? Depending on what you need, there are several different things you can do to copy all of that information from one drive to another. Take a look at the following sections and determine which one is best for you.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Crossover cable
• Flash drive
• Writable CD

Computer to Computer

1. Connect your new computer directly to your old computer with a crossover cable. This method is good if you have two fully working computers. Connect one end of the cable to each computer’s network card.

2. Set each computer up to share. Make sure file sharing is enabled. Then share each drive letter on both computers. Turn off any firewalls on both computers. Give each computer a separate IP address but the same gateway and netmask. Also, go into the control panel and setup each computer on a home network with the same name.

3. Find one computer from the other. Go to the old computer and look in network neighborhood for the other computer. When you see it, click on it and you will see the contents of the drive you set to share.

4. Open another window and select all the information you want to copy. You can now drag or copy and paste the files you want into the window showing the drive on the new computer.

Inside One Computer

5. Install both hard drives on one computer. Most likely you will already have one hard drive installed. If the second hard drive is an IDE drive, you can simply plug in where the CD ROM is connected and temporarily disconnect your CD drive. If it’s not an IDE drive, you will have to connect it to whatever device type is required.

6. Prepare the drives. If your drive is new, you will need to format and partition the drive first. Once this is done, reboot the computer and both drives should be visible in windows explorer.

7. Drag and drop or copy and paste your information from one drive to the other.

Media

8. Use a writable CD. Simply copy and burn all of your files to a CD. You can also use a flash drive if you have one big enough and have the patience to connect and reconnect as many times as you need.

9. Remove the current hard drive. Disconnect the current drive and install the second drive in its place.

10. Insert the CD or flash drive and copy everything to the new hard drive.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure all of your files are viewable that you want copy, especially hidden files.