Number 277 - June 2006

Transfering Data
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@home.com, Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. Feb 2005
You have your new machine up and running. You've exercised due dilligence and installed an antivirus program, a firewall, a spam filter, and a pop-up suppressor. Your security settings are exactly the way you want them. Have you forgotten anything?    Oh, yes! How do you get your irreplaceable data from your old machine to your new machine without transferring all your problems along with your files?    If time is precious, and you don't mind some extra expense, you could use one of the programs designed expressly for file "migration". The most widely known is AlohaBob PC Relocator for $30. The program records your data, settings, and individual programs, and moves them to the new computer. There is a $70 version that gives you more control over what is recorded and moved. It may be problematical to spend $70 for a tool that you will use only once. Give this careful thought before you spend your money. Similar programs are Move Me, IntelliMover, and Desktop DNA Professional. All are priced similarly. Before you buy anything, let's examine the tools that are available within Windows.    We're going to look at the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard available within Windows XP. This is a well-designed relocation tool. It doesn't move programs, but it handles data and system settings as good as or better than any third party program on the market. You can find it in Systems Tools from the Accessories menu. Start the process from your old machine.    Insert Figure here    The first dialog box appearing under the Wizard is very important. Read it carefully, and pay particular attention to the underlined phrase, connecting your computers. Left click on this link to get an enormous amount of important information about what the Wizard thinks is the best way to transfer your data.    Connecting with a serial cable is not a bad idea. It's a cheap, easy, and effective way to do the job. Any consumer electronics store will know what you're talking about if you need to purchase one. Don't try this with a parallel cable. While it's possible to transfer your files with a parallel cable with the Wizard, you had better be knowledgeable about networking and related issues if anything goes wrong. Generally, it's more trouble than it's worth. Stick to a serial cable. It's easier and cheaper.    The next step is to make sure you have a serial connection on both your old and new machines. It's a given that your old machine will have one, but your new machine might not. This is unlikely, but you do need to check. Some newer motherboards are being manufactured without serial ports because new peripheral devices are almost universally being attached with USB2 or Firewire connections.    You must also check to see that both serial ports, also called COM ports, have the same number of pins. Newer machines have 9 pin connectors. If your old machine is of a sufficiently ancient vintage, it may have a 25 pin serial connector. If this is the case, you will need an adapter. Finally, the cable must be long enough to connect the computers together. Duh!    At this point you tell the Wizard you are on your old machine, and you want to transfer files and settings to your new machine. It's hard to go wrong if you read the Wizard's dialog boxes thoroughly before proceeding with the next step.	Once the Wizard knows it's on the old system, it will take over while it prepares the computer for the transfer. When the Wizard is finished, another dialog box appears, and defaults to the direct cable option.    Insert Figure Here    The Wizard will now instruct you to connect the cable to both machines. Start the Wizard on the new machine, bring it to the same dialog box as the old machine, and select Autodetect. Once you finish this, click Next on the old machine. Read the dialog boxes carefully, and everything is automatic from this point.    That's about as easy and simple as it gets. However, it isn't the whole picture. This does nothing for your saved emails, contacts, and cookies that you want transferred. Let's see what you can do about them.    In Microsoft Outlook, you can easily export your archived email, contacts, and whatever folders you've created to an external file. You can then burn the file to a CD or DVD and move it to the new computer. You also could try emailing it to yourself, but if the file is more than a few megabytes in size, your Internet Service Provider probably won't let you do it.    As an alternate to the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, you can copy your data to a CD or DVD disk, and then you can copy from your disk to the new machine. This can be as simple as drag and drop.    Insert Figure Here    Another option is to buy an external hard drive with a USB connection and move your data by simple drag and drop or with copy and paste functions. Transferring information from the external drive to another machine is ridiculously easy, and it has the additional benefit of being an instant backup to your new primary machine. Don't forget the Favorites folder within Internet Explorer. You don't want to needlessly recreate all those Internet Shortcuts. The same thing applies to the Links folder. Go into the Windows folder to see if there is anything else you need to copy to the new system.    If you keep everything within the My Documents folder, just burn the folder and all its contents to either a CD or copy it to an external drive.    There is a certain amount of patience required with this task because of all the little details within it. It will take some time. Transferring data isn't exactly a no-brainer, but if you make haste slowly, and plan carefully, there is no reason it has to be a painful experience.    Copyright 2005. This article is from the February 2005 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication.
Number 277 - June 2006