New Computer

[bradleyy]

I know very little about computers so any help on this matter is greatly appreciated. I am getting a new computer and want to put all my old word documents, music and pictures that I have saved onto my new one. What is the best way to do this? Should I save them to disk? And do I need to compress them or something like that to get more on one disk? 

[Pinotage]

Copy them onto diskettes - it doesn't matter if you need a lot of them, they're very cheap and you've got yourself a backup archive at the same time.

 

Alternatively think about getting a USB memory stick, 128MB for around �1, equivalent to about 120 diskettes. Plug it in your USB socket, it looks like an extra drive on Windows Explorer, copy all your files, then plug it into your new machine and copy back.

 

And you'll find many uses for it later

[Pinotage]

Of course, that shouldn't read �1 - �17 is more like it, and may be on sale after Xmas.

[stevie21]

why not just put them onto a CD or two? Much cheaper than having to buy a USB pen. If you have lots of music then a USB pen big enough to save them all on might be quite expensive. For the same price you could probably buy a DVD writer which would hold infinitely more data.

Or with the right wires you can transfer them from one PC to another.

[Closer]

Alternatively, remove the hard disk from your old machine and attach it as a slave in your new one...no copying required. Of course this relies on you not wanting to do anything with your old PC once you get the new one, but you could do it as a temporary measure to copy your files across and then put the hard drive back in the old machine.

[Ralph]

You can get a full gigabyte of storage on a USB2 Memory stick for less than �53 from here. For the same cash, you could get a CD-RW drive and a stack of discs, but it's more than likely that your new computer would have one of these or better. Personally, I'd buy (did buy!) the USB memory stick, then you can hang your important documents and digital pictures around your neck and take them everywhere. Closer's suggestion of installing your hard disk in your new PC is a very good one and really easy unless it's ancient. However, if your new PC is a laptop, you're stuffed! If it is a desktop, installing an old drive will also slow down the new drive, but it's not going to make any real difference to web browsing, email etc. but might affect the latest games or digital video editing.

[lukey121]

How do you put a link to another page in with your answer, thats really cool.

[Pinotage]

I thought the key words in this post were I know very little about computers hence I assumed suggestions on removing hard disks, slaving, or installing new hardware would probably be tasks that bradleyy wouldn't want to do.

 

  Using CDs rather than diskettes would be better, however since bradleyy didn't mention them I assumed his old machine didn't have a CD writer.

  Perhaps bradleyy will give out some stars to our replies so we can find out which ones he found most useful

[Ralph]

Lukey121, it's really easy, IndieSinger describes it perfectly here! Sorry for butting in on your question bradleyy.

[lukey121]

thanks ralph

[lauralane]

how do you gives stars for an answer?