Krys - nowadays, the biggest reason to partition your hard drive is if you are going to have a "dual boot" situation - if you are going to have Windoze and Linux on your machine, and you want to pick which one to boot from each time you start up.
As for migrating your stuff from one machine to the other -
One option is to take the hard drive out of your old machine and install it as a secondary hard drive in your new machine.
Another option is:
Start out by installing all the software that you want to use onto the new machine.
Then after that most of what you will want to move is likely to be in the "My Documents" folders. Just burn those to a CD and copy that onto your new machine in your "My Documents" folder.
Okay, question time.
Do you have Quicken? MS Money? something along those lines?
If so, there is backup capability built into the software. From within the software: do a diskette backup, then on the new machine, do a restore from backup.
What other software packages do you have on your machine?
Do you have lots of music files, etc?
And you probably need to save and copy over your Internet bookmarks.
You'll be surprised how little stuff you really end up having to copy from your old machine to your new.
What steve! says is right, but I didn't want to do all of that copying and inserting...
When I got a new desktop I just did it through the router... set the old one up to share... then drug it over... but I'm not a techno guy so I can't tell you how, except that XP walked me through it...
Like Steve said, install all your software on the new computer. Then, you can backup all your data on to the new 160 gig external drive, and from there, copy it to wherever it's needed on your c drive.
Forgot to mention, you can backup and all your existing email and address books also. The way to do it depends on what version of Outlook, or Outlook Express you are using.
The old one is really shot. I doesn't know it has an A dirve anymore, and everytime I try setting up the software for the exdternat hard drive it fails. That old one may be totally shot.
I'm going to have to resort to FTP or CD's and I don't want to use that many of them just to transfer stuff!
So you have an external hard drive I take it, correct?
Is it USB? I am sure it is, correct?
And you say when you plug in your external USB hard drive into your oldie to copy data, the external drive is not being recognized? Is that right so far?
Well that could be a number of things especially if the oldie is Windoze 98.
I think your easiest thing is to just do CD's if you are already familiar with that process.
But if it were me, I would network the 2 computers together and take it from there, copy one to another across the network. But that technique is too much to go into here.
Just be sure to keep that other computer and its hard drive intact until you get through this and get all your data over.
However, those external hard drives are nice to have for backups.
I probably shouldn't stick my nose in here, cause I am CERTAINLY no expert. HOWEVER, what I did a few weeks agao was just attach the old drive to the new computer as a slave on the primary IDE. I copied (not moved) what I wanted from the old drive to the new one. Once I verified that the old data was intact on the new drive, then (and only then) did I remove the stuff from the old drive.
Note, when attaching the old drive as a slave you need to change th jumper on the drive to a "slave position" from its original "master" position. there is often a diagram on the drive that shows this positioning. If not, you can find it on the website for the drive's manufacturer. just go to their site, and then the support section, and look search for the manual for your model drive. While there, the manual probably also gives directions on where on the IDE cable to connect the drive, and other step by step directions.
when you first boot under this setup, you might need to go into the bios and make sure the bios is set to auto recognize the new (old) drive attached to your new machine. If you do not know how to go into the bios setup, ask again. I am sure someone can walk you thru that also. You computer screen when you first boot probably tells you the keystroke for you machine bios setup (like "Press Delete key to enter setup"
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Steve!
Krys - nowadays, the biggest reason to partition your hard drive is if you are going to have a "dual boot" situation - if you are going to have Windoze and Linux on your machine, and you want to pick which one to boot from each time you start up.
As for migrating your stuff from one machine to the other -
One option is to take the hard drive out of your old machine and install it as a secondary hard drive in your new machine.
Another option is:
Start out by installing all the software that you want to use onto the new machine.
Then after that most of what you will want to move is likely to be in the "My Documents" folders. Just burn those to a CD and copy that onto your new machine in your "My Documents" folder.
Okay, question time.
Do you have Quicken? MS Money? something along those lines?
If so, there is backup capability built into the software. From within the software: do a diskette backup, then on the new machine, do a restore from backup.
What other software packages do you have on your machine?
Do you have lots of music files, etc?
And you probably need to save and copy over your Internet bookmarks.
You'll be surprised how little stuff you really end up having to copy from your old machine to your new.
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Tom Strange
What steve! says is right, but I didn't want to do all of that copying and inserting...
When I got a new desktop I just did it through the router... set the old one up to share... then drug it over... but I'm not a techno guy so I can't tell you how, except that XP walked me through it...
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Bluzeman
Like Steve said, install all your software on the new computer. Then, you can backup all your data on to the new 160 gig external drive, and from there, copy it to wherever it's needed on your c drive.
That should get you started, anyway!
Rick
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Bluzeman
Forgot to mention, you can backup and all your existing email and address books also. The way to do it depends on what version of Outlook, or Outlook Express you are using.
Rick
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pawtucket
What kind of connection does the back up drive use? firewire or USB?
If it is USB and your old computer has USB, then you could back up everything on that and then plug it into the new computer and load it up.
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krys
Bingo Pawtucket! Now why didn't I think of that!!!!!
Now I have to day...."duh..."
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krys
none of the above are working.
The old one is really shot. I doesn't know it has an A dirve anymore, and everytime I try setting up the software for the exdternat hard drive it fails. That old one may be totally shot.
I'm going to have to resort to FTP or CD's and I don't want to use that many of them just to transfer stuff!
Rats
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igotout
So you have an external hard drive I take it, correct?
Is it USB? I am sure it is, correct?
And you say when you plug in your external USB hard drive into your oldie to copy data, the external drive is not being recognized? Is that right so far?
Well that could be a number of things especially if the oldie is Windoze 98.
I think your easiest thing is to just do CD's if you are already familiar with that process.
But if it were me, I would network the 2 computers together and take it from there, copy one to another across the network. But that technique is too much to go into here.
Just be sure to keep that other computer and its hard drive intact until you get through this and get all your data over.
However, those external hard drives are nice to have for backups.
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HAPe4me
I probably shouldn't stick my nose in here, cause I am CERTAINLY no expert. HOWEVER, what I did a few weeks agao was just attach the old drive to the new computer as a slave on the primary IDE. I copied (not moved) what I wanted from the old drive to the new one. Once I verified that the old data was intact on the new drive, then (and only then) did I remove the stuff from the old drive.
Note, when attaching the old drive as a slave you need to change th jumper on the drive to a "slave position" from its original "master" position. there is often a diagram on the drive that shows this positioning. If not, you can find it on the website for the drive's manufacturer. just go to their site, and then the support section, and look search for the manual for your model drive. While there, the manual probably also gives directions on where on the IDE cable to connect the drive, and other step by step directions.
when you first boot under this setup, you might need to go into the bios and make sure the bios is set to auto recognize the new (old) drive attached to your new machine. If you do not know how to go into the bios setup, ask again. I am sure someone can walk you thru that also. You computer screen when you first boot probably tells you the keystroke for you machine bios setup (like "Press Delete key to enter setup"
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krys
Thanks HAPe - I've "broken into" my bios before, but what you are suggesting is way way beyond what I understand.
I appreciate your attempts. I'm almost done...almost in a new country!
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