Biting the bullet and why I may be a little scarce.

you can have network transfers between completely different computer systems, between mac and windows isn't uncommon. The people at Circuit City are very much wrong
Click to expand...

No kidding (also a zillion flavors of UNIX and Linux)...otherwise everyone would have to have the exactly same stuff for the the big network called the internet to work...DOH!

If there are different rules for lengths of filenames and the like or other filesystem differences, then sometimes it's not so simple, and might require a "translation" process, but it can be done, even from an antique VAX computer to the latest box running some flavor of Windows.

If enough people need to do it and the difference isn't great, it will be cheap and easy...like Win95 to XP.

If very few need to do it, it will be expensive. Like a from a early 70's pre-PC twelve-bit dedicated instrument computer to a thirty-two bit Silicon Graphics workstation. That required a box that cost $30K...but it could be done.


Think how many businesses have made such an upgrade--None would have done so if there wasn't a way to retain/transfer the old data.

Applications with hardware/operating system dependence will not operate properly, but they will copy over intact. And if copied back into the right environment, would then work again.

The salesperson is an idiot...if he were ignorant, he would have simply said that he didn't know how to do it---I hope he didn't have to count change for you.;)
 
I've done this quite easily and successfully twice now, but with Win 98 and 2000. Disclaimer: YMMV but I think it should work fine. :)

1. Turn off your computer and unplug it.

2. Unplug the CD-ROM and hook up your old Hard Drive to the 2 cables(power and data). The CD-ROM and HD are both on IDE interfaces so this works fine. You don't have to change any jumpers this way either.

3. Plug in and boot up your new machine with old hard drive on CD-ROM cable. Whatever flavour of windows you have now should recognize the old drive automatically.

4. Move all your data onto the new drive. Don't worry about system files you can leave them behind.

5. Shut down and unplug.

6. Disconnect the old hard drive and plug in your CD-ROM again.

7. Plug it back in and fire it up. Voila: New machine with old data.

Nice to have someone else with computer sense with you while you attempt this for the first time. I don't think that you will have any problems with the FAT 16 to NTFS file system compatibility. When you copy the files over they should automatically convert as they are placed on your new NTFS drive.

Sounds like Circuit City just want more more money for some kind of Data Transfer service or something. Or maybe they really just don't know.

Hmmph.

Hope this helps,
Phil
 
Just make sure when you copy folders over that you don't OVERWRITE any folders.
Best bet is to make a folder on the NEW drive called "old stuff" and then copy everything you want from the old drive into that. Drag and drop. I know when I did this on the network it would choke, so do one or two folders at a time, if you copy a LOT of stuff. Otherwise it can be a real pain, if it chokes in the middle of a huge folder.
 
Bill has 120 GB on his new PC...

Hopefully there's no concern for space.

In fact, Uncle - you should make a folder on your hard drive and call it "Old Stuff" and dump the whole hard drive in there...:eek: It's only 6 GB and that's barely 5% of what you got now..!


It sounds complicated the way everyone spells it out, but in fact, it's very simple.

Dan
 
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