Ask a Silly Question ...

[John Devereux]

But for backup purposes, everyone should already have some way of
backing up the HDD, such as Ghost and an external HDD with USB 2.0.
Or else be like the lady at our club, who has a sweatshirt that says:

Of course one must then be very careful to get the "source" and "destination"
the right way around. My (business) partner once "ghosted" a blank
drive onto our main server hard disk

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Of course one must then be very careful to get the "source" and "destination"
the right way around. My (business) partner once "ghosted" a blank
drive onto our main server hard disk

I bet you gave him "The business!" after that. ;-)

 

[Rich Grise]

OK, I'm responding to myself - sosueme. ;-)

I've been out of the loop for awhile, kinda in transit. I got the serial
thingie going, (a half-null modem, kinda - I did the 9-pin equivalent
of 4&6-20, and looped back the other HS line). Transferred a couple
megabytes in about an hour. Most of which time was spent dicking
around with windoze software.

So I put the old 4 GB drive in the new computer - all I had to do
was change the jumper from master to slave, and I had to use the
ribbon cable from the old comp, since the new comp is so barebones
that the IDE1 cable didn't even have a connector for the slave.
Took about 2 minutes to physically move the disk (I'm a hacker,
after all - one screw, two connectors, done!), and another 2
minutes to drag and drop the whole drive's contents
into its own dir. on the new drive. Of course, when I booted,
W2K found all four partitions, so I've got C:, D:, E:, F:, G:,
H:, I:, and J: drives. "Windows has found new hardware ..."
I gotta admit, somebody at M$ was apparently awake one day; it's
turning out to be quite nifty. Please don't gouge my eyes out. ;-)

Since then, I've done the same with my latest client's computer -
The guy said, "Before you do anything to this computer, BE SURE
YOU SAVE EVERYTHING!" The client's comp. is a Compaq Presario.
A bunch of USB ports, but I contemplated tying up both comp's
for however long, so I just pulled the drive and dragged and
dropped it onto the new drive. I'm at the client's comp. now,
and it turns out that we're not going to midify it much - I
think I have them almost talked into using Linux for the firewall
and network server, but that's kind of down the line.

But I do want to thank everybody for participating in what
seems to be a lively discussion and like that.

The whole operation was a great success, and I have determined
that using COM ports for a network is a really stupid idea. ;-)

With computers these days, you don't even need a freaking router!
They come with like 6 USB ports by default!

Yeah, I think this is going to be a fun assignment, except for
the fact that my two primary cow-orkers are a Luddite who, if
he wasn't doing it 50 years ago it doesn't exist, and a male
psycho bitch from hell, but what the heck - it pays the bills,
and the fringe bennies are kinda cool - like, they're letting
me live in my house-car (Winnebago) in their parking lot, for
zero rent.

Again, and I hope it's not the beer talking, thanks everybody for
responding to the thread, and all that yadda blah. %-}

Cheers!
Rich

 

[John Fortier]

OK, I'm responding to myself - sosueme. ;-)

So I put the old 4 GB drive in the new computer - all I had to do
was change the jumper from master to slave, and I had to use the
ribbon cable from the old comp, since the new comp is so barebones
that the IDE1 cable didn't even have a connector for the slave.
Took about 2 minutes to physically move the disk (I'm a hacker,
after all - one screw, two connectors, done!), and another 2
minutes to drag and drop the whole drive's contents
into its own dir. on the new drive. Of course, when I booted,
W2K found all four partitions, so I've got C:, D:, E:, F:, G:,
H:, I:, and J: drives. "Windows has found new hardware ..."
I gotta admit, somebody at M$ was apparently awake one day; it's
turning out to be quite nifty. Please don't gouge my eyes out. ;-)

Rich,

My office PC went west a couple of weeks ago. Crashed processor and no hope
of recovery. I tool the disk out, changed it to slave and pushed into my
home PC. Absolutely no problem.

It's also allowed me to exchange data between the drives like never before,
so, it's a valuable exercise, even if it was an emergency move.

I'd recommend disk moving any time with modern PCs, It's literally plug and
play.

Regards

John Fortier

 

[Dennis Clark]

I just went through this - Save yourself some SERIOUS sweat.

Fire up Winzip and zip up directories.
bring up Hyperterm on both computers
connect them at the highest rate you can (115K usually)
connect the serial ports using a null modem connector
send the zip files from one to the other computer.

This works well, reliably and fast enough for me anyway.

You'll still have to install all the apps on the new computer to get all
of the registry settings right, but the data can be dumped through using
the zmodem file transfer via hyperterm.

good luck and have fun,
DLC

: Hi. I just bought a new computer, and was thinking of ways to get all
: my stuff
: from the old computer to the new one. I thought, "serial link," which
: would
: be fun anyway. So, since the local RS is in disarray during
: remodeling, I went
: to the local Home Club and got some 4-conductor, jacketed, shielded
: wire.So, OK, cool - I've got that stranded bare drain wire, which is
: frame ground,
: obviously, and a red, green, black, and white wire. So black or white
: would
: be signal ground, and red/green RxD and TxD. So, what's the thing to
: do with
: the excess wire that makes the most sense? There _are_ four_
: handshake lines,
: if I want 1/4-duplex handshaking. If I did that, are there any ideas
: as to
: which particular wire (RTS -> CTS, DTR -> DSR, one way or the other)
: it
: would do any good to connect? Or should I just tie it off.

: Thanks!
: Rich

: If you want to email me, elide 'ard'.