copy from one pc to another pc

By you saying you dont have lan at home, do you mean you dont have a network hub or even networking cards?

If you dont have a hub but have networking cards (Nic's) you could make a cross cable rather than a patch cable and "network" them that way.

Next if you dont have ANY of those things, you could take the hard drive out of the one that has the data you want, and slave it to the master drive of the computer where you want the data and then just copy/cut/move over the data from the slave drive.

If you dont want to do that, you could buy a serial cable to transfer the data that way. It would be a cable that runs from the serial ports on each of the computer. Kinda like a cheap way to setup the cross cable option.

The slaving of the hard drives is the cheapest and actually costs you nothing and you keep both OS's intact also just as you would if you networked them.

Hope that helps

Gearbone, actually the part about slaving a hard drive will not work. I'll explain why> Lets assume for the sake of argument that each hdd has 1 partition each with an os. Each partition has a file/table which gives the pc boot info, how many os's how many partitions , etc. When you combine 2 drives each with a table telling the pc that there is only 1 os, there is a conflict which can't be overcome. The status of the drive master or slave doesn't compensate for this.

The easiest option for our young friend is to simply buy nic's if his pc's don't already have them and transfer info by crossover cable. The exact procedure will vary based on what os/os's are on the pc's. manishjha, can you provide that info?

HUH? Im very sorry friend, but you can have any OS on a hard drive and if its the slave DRIVE it will not conflict with the BOOT drive. From his post he just wants to transfer documents like mydocs, pictures data, NOT the entire OS. I agree that if he is trying to COPY an entire OS and installed files, this is not the route, but I slave peoples hard drives that contain blown OUT OS's that just dont boot, to our master computer, transfer the data that they wish saved and then FORMAT the drive and start over. And as a matter of fact it does not matter that the OS is blown our either, you can slave ANY drive to a master OR even put it on the 2nd IDE channel, boot the computer thats fine and it will install the new drive and you will be able to click on it like its part of the machine.

I do this ALL the time without problems. Who ever told you that you cannot slave a drive that contains an OS to another drive thats a master that has an OS was sadly mistaken. Infact I have a computer on the bench with a blown OS and he just wants it WIPED out. I took out his drive, slaved it on the PRIMARY channel and guess what, im transferrring the data now to our network server.

Another possible option is to make use of any of the many online storage services available. Some are free of charge, however the free ones generally limit howmuch info you can download at any given time. One I've used is Streamload.com. They offered virtually unlimited uploads and 10 mb of dl per week. The interface is very easy to use. I don't know how much info you need to transfer, nor do i know if streamload has changed....

I've done a lot of data transferring using all of these methods. While all have their plusses and minuses, The easiest for a non technical person is a special USB cable that connects 2 PCs. I came across this program that a customer has, called Intellimover. It's designed for people upgrading PCs. It won't move your programs, but it will analyze your programs and move all data, profiles and settings to the new computer if the new one has the same programs installed. It can use a parallel or special USB cable.

The best feature in my opinion is the USB "crossover" cable and a utility that comes with the software that allows you to simply transfer any file in either direction. I tested it and got about 3.5 MB/sec out of it. Of course this is slower than slaving one drive to another, but it's plenty fast if you don't want to get involved in opening your PCs.

Go to http://www.detto.com/products/index.html. The USB version is about $60.

If this is Windows O/S you can go for direct cable connect and use a null modem cable or a "Laplink" parallel cable to connect the PC's. Slow but simple and if you don't expect to do this as a permanent setup very cost-efficient.

Regards
/RID

Gearbone, maybe you should go back and reevaluate exactly what procedures you took as will I. I am speaking from experience not someone elses opinion. Here is the scenario: I built a pc, formated the hdd, installed os. I removed the hdd from my original pc and connected it as a slave to the new machine. I received an error message, can't remember exactly which, but the only way to correct this was to remove the slaved drive or a repair install of my os. As this was my first attempt, I make room for the possibility that there was a different problem, but I couldn't find one....

manish,,,
      I go with rid on this one. If it is not a permanent arrangement, then use the null modem serial cable. It is the cheap way out.

     If you want permanent connection, you can set a really inexpensive (around $80) home network. NE 2000 PCI TX LAN Card @ $10 and an 8-port generic switch (dont know if there are any 4-port switches out there) for about $45. Buy 2 LAN cables (10-feet) and you have a network. Only drawback is the distance between the two PCs. If they are close together, then the 10-foot LAN cable will be fine.

ascension1014,
Dude you are completely wrong....maybe you had one bad experience, but working in a computer store reinstalling and copying over the backed up data on to the computer as Gearbone suggested from a second hard drive, we do daily.  If you want to avoid the confusion of master/slave, leave the hard drive on the primary channel and plug the drive you want to copy from into the secondary channel making sure to unplug the Cdrom(s) that would normally be plugged into it.  That way their should be no conflicts and when you boot into windows it will detect the drive, give it a Drive letter and all you have to do is copy and paste.

understood....

ascension1014/tictacksir
the problem could be the loader confused about which active primary partitions to boot.you could actually set-up the other HD to any available channel,master or slave. just be sure your operating system partition is the only active partition.
to manishjha- if you're going to transfer only small files then just go for the null modem connector/laplink cable. use the usb connection for faster speeds(go to network connections, then make new connections, then choose direct cable connections, follow succeeding directions). but for really big file transfers without setting up a network i suggest you just hook up the source hard disk drive to the available IDE on your PC. then be sure to properly set the proper bootable partition.(use partition magic and any boot manager so as not to damage the other hard disk's system).

If one of the pc's has a cd writer then you could try Ghosting.

This could make an identical clone of computer A and replicate it onto computer B. It will also allow you to clone certain files & directories.

Hope this helps

Jon

Several good suggestions were made but no feedback. I suggest points forfeit and delete (or PAQ).
/RID

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akboss
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Thats BS. Person gets the answers they need and then bails. My answer was confirmed by another person that the transferred method worked. Ill remember this on how to get questions answered without having to give credit