How to Use FTP with Dos in Windows

It is often necessary to send large files through the internet - too large to be an email attachment. Generally, people recommend installing new software to use FTP - software includes FileZilla, or WS-FTP. Sometimes, though, the simplest solution is the best; this may be the case with FTP. There is already a program on your Windows computer called FTP, and it's simple to use. Without installing anything new, you can be ftp'ing in now time.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer with Windows
• Some minor knowledge of DOS

1. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is used to transfer files from one computer to another. It is specifically used for transferring files from the computer you're working on to another computer.

2. The first step is to fire-up DOS. To do so, use select 'Run' from the Windows start menu. In the run dialog that appears, type in 'Cmd' and hit enter. You should now have a command prompt.

3. You now need to navigate to the directory where the files that you want to send are located. This is where your basic DOS knowledge will come in handy (if you don't know DOS, see my eHow page, 'How to use the Basics of Dos'). To change directories, use the 'cd' command. To change hard disks, type the letter of the hard drive you want to navigate to followed by a colon, and hit enter (e.g. to navigate to the U hard drive, type 'U:' - note, this will only work if you have a hard drive called 'U' on your computer).

4. Now it's time to use FTP. To start, type ftp followed by the address of the location you will be transferring to. For example (I work with a website called backpackingforprincesses.com) - I would type 'ftp backpackingforprincesses.com'. You may then need to enter in a username and password. Once you do, you should now have access to the other computer.

5. You need to navigate to the directory where you want the files placed. For example, 'cd public_html/transferDirectory'.

6. If you're transferring binary data (e.g. jpeg, png, bmp), type 'binary' and hit enter. If you're transferring text data (e.g. html, txt), type 'ascii' and hit enter.

7. It's time to transfer. To transfer one file, you use the 'put' command as follows 'put filename'. To transfer multiple files, you use the 'mput' command. Do so as follows: 'mput file1.html file2.html' or 'mput *.html'.

8. If you're done transferring files, type 'quit' to exit out of ftp. That's it! This procedure must be repeated for all the files you want to transfer, and all the different directories you want to those files transferred to.
   
   You're now an FTP user/master. Have fun.

Tips & Warnings

• Other useful DOS commands include dir (to list files), mkdir (to create a directory), and del (to delete a file)
• Often, computers that you FTP to (e.g. web servers) allow for linux commands as well as DOS commands. You can probably use 'ls' as well as 'dir' with similar results.

[ndwork]

on 12/21/2008 Hi - I'm the author of this eHow article. I heartily welcome suggestions. If you think that this article can be improve in any way, please don't hesitate to let me know.