Laptop on last legs - need to move 450GB data to new PC - help?

BenEadir

Hi all,

I've a Dell Vostro 3500 i5 with 4GB ram and a 500GB HDD. It's developed a problem in the last couple of weeks and is taking up to 20 minutes to start up from powered off state. I've still got hardware support from Dell so I'm sure they'll end up swapping out the HDD as I got errors running the diagnostics they asked me to run indicating there's a problem with the HDD.

Fortunately I purchased a new 1TB desktop which arrived yesterday so before I call in the Dell engineer I'd like to move all my files from the Vostro to the new Inspiron Desktop.

I have a Belkin Easy Transfer Cable from a few years ago which I'm hoping will do the trick but I'd appreciate any suggestions on the best way to do this.

Cheers,

Ben

Khannie

Personally I would take the drive out of the laptop and stick it in a USB enclosure if that's an option, then use that to copy to another box. Whatever works though. I don't know what that easy transfer cable is. Is it just a network crossover cable?

edit: I see what that cable is. If it works, by all means fire ahead and use it.

BenEadir

FYI I connected the Belkin Easy Transfer Cable to both machines, launched the "Windows Easy Transfer" application (Start -> Search -> "Windows Easy Transfer" will locate it) and followed the prompts on both screens.

Transferred 370GB of files in about 6 hours.

Happy camper again.

Ben

BostonB

And do you have backup in case the drive fails?

BenEadir

BostonB wrote: »

And do you have backup in case the drive fails?

I've used www.carbonite.com for a number of years. $50 a year for all the data backup you can shake a stick at. I had all 450GB backed up to Carbonite and will transfer my account to this new machine also.

If necessary I could have downloaded all 450GB (over several days) at work but given the dying HDD was still struggling on I wanted to transfer the data directly if possible.

Cheers,

Ben

BostonB

Just checking