Trying To Connect Two Computers Together to Backup One To the Other

[Luke T.]

My PC is acting up. It shuts itself off every once in a while for no reason. I've already changed the power supply, and nothing improved. To make matters worse, my CD burner makes CDs that only my PC can read! What good is that?

I want to back up my PC. I have all of our digital camera photos of the twins since birth on there, along with pics of our newborn girl. To lose them would be catastrophic.

I have an old Pentium I laptop that has a serial connector and a USB connector.

Connecting the USB to the USB on my PC got me nowhere.

How can I copy data from my PC to my laptop?

[Cecil]

If you have ethernet cards in both, you can run an RJ-45 cable between the computers and transfer the files over the network. Alternatively, if you have broadband, it might be faster just to sign up for some free webspace (yahoo briefcase?), upload the pictures from one computer and download them on the other.

If the laptop doesn't have an ethernet card, you could buy one of these (http://www.wyntec.com.au/usblinkcable.htm) to make use of the USB port.

You could buy or borrow a zip drive.

Or, depending on how much stuff you want to transfer and how much time you want to spend, there's always the floppy disk choice. :D

[Luke T.]

Originally posted by Cecil
If you have ethernet cards in both, you can run an RJ-45 cable between the computers and transfer the files over the network. Alternatively, if you have broadband, it might be faster just to sign up for some free webspace (yahoo briefcase?), upload the pictures from one computer and download them on the other.

If the laptop doesn't have an ethernet card, you could buy one of these (http://www.wyntec.com.au/usblinkcable.htm) to make use of the USB port.

You could buy or borrow a zip drive.

Or, depending on how much stuff you want to transfer and how much time you want to spend, there's always the floppy disk choice. :D

The laptop does not have an ethernet card. I have a cable that has a USB connector on each end. It does not have the contraption in the middle that the one in your link does.

I was playing around with Programs-Accessories-Communications last night and tried to set up a Host-Guest configuration, but it only gave three choices. LPT1, COM1 or COM2. The screen instructions said you must connect like to like. I can only assume the serial port on my laptop is COM1, but I don't have a cable to connect to it and then to the PC. Would it be worth my time/trouble/money to get one? Would that work?

[DVFinn]

In order to connect the computers you will need one of the following.


Null Modem Cable - to connect serial to serial
Data transfer cable for the parallel ports
USB cable made for data transfer between PCs, such as the one you were shown
network adapter for the laptop and a crossover ethernet cable


The Null modem cable is probably the cheapest, but also the least useful for modern. If you have a serial cable already though you can buy a null modem adapter for about $3.00 in the US. Sould be equally affordable overseas.

The Network adapter is the most useful, but not worht the money if you aren't going to have a laptop to use it on anymore. If you have aa friend with a laptop you may be able to borrow one. You still need either a crossover cable or a hub. A crossover cable is simply a network cable with the send and receive wires switched between one end and the other, allowing to connect PCs directly without a device between them.

I'd recommend the usb solution, which also requires appropriate software. It should be relatively cheap and is handy to have around.

An additional option, if you can borrrow a usb hard drive or cd burner from someone your problem is solved.

[Luke T.]

Okay. Thanks, guys. That was very helpful. I'll print this page.

[WildCat]

Luke, are you using cd-rw's? If you are using rewritable cdr's it is likely only your cd burner can read them. Try burning to a regular cdr, close the disc when you're done and then try it in another cd drive.

[boomer6]

1.Put all of your pictures into one folder and then ZIP that folder. Copy that folder onto your cd. (recommended) you will have a backup on a cd
or
2. purchase a null modem cable.
or
3. purchase a USB Jump Drive.

you can look at what might be the most cost effective at tigerdirect.com

*(most likely your problem with your music is that you are writing to the CD as "DATA/MEDIA" and not "AUDIO/MP3")

Hope this helps.

[teddygrahams]

Reliable, but not cheap:

1. Buy 1 hard drive, larger than the one you currently have.

2. Use disk copy utility that will come with new hard drive to duplicate old drive.

3. Remove either old drive, or new drive.

4. Eventually, if the computer dies, buy a $70 USB 2.0 drive case, install drive into it.


DVD writers are now down to ridiculous prices, even compared to CD writers of a year ago. Get one that writes DVD-R, and backup 4.7GB multiple times.

[ShowMe]

Buy a 2.5 inch hard drive adapter, put the laptop hard drive into your PC & copy drive to drive.

[Earthborn]

1. Print some of the photos and other documents that are most important to you. You'll be amazed how that will ease your stress, even if it is just in black and white.

2. Get some good old fashioned diskettes. Depending on the resolution, you should be able to put a few photos on each in JPG format, and a whole bunch of text documents. If you make scaled down copies of the photos (640x480 really isn't so ugly as digital camera salesmen try to convince you! And you'll be glad you still have something.) you should be able to fit about 20 on a single diskette.

3. Using a Null Modem is easy, cheap and reliable, but s-l-o-o-o-w-w. Really, you have no idea how slow it is until you have actually tried to transfer a measly megabyte or two this way. There should be no problem however if you connect COM1 of one computer with COM2 of another.

4. Parallel data transfer cables are hard to come by, much faster than null modem cables, but still pretty slow by today's standards.

5. Depending on how much megabytes those photos are, you might consider buying one of these USB keychain things. Good for backup, and isn't the idea of carrying many megabytes of photos of your children everywhere you go just lovely?

6. As has already been mentioned check the settings of your CD burning software. Burn ordinary cheap CD-Rs, not CD-RWs. You don't want to erase them anyway, right?

7. You could it up by putting it on a webpage, web-back up service or by just emailing it to a friend (with broadband!) It will be slow, so just back-up things that are most important to you this way. More than about 20 Megabytes is pretty much out of the question, and even that is not actually fun.

8. Perhaps the software that came with your digital camera allows you to upload some of the photos back to the chip in the camera? Whether that is a practical solution depends largely on how much memory your camera has, or how many extra chips you are willing to buy.

9. Remember that when your computer finally has given up the ghost, the harddisk is most probably still unharmed. You could plug it into a friend's computer (preferably a bit of a computer Guru) fiddle with the BIOS a bit and access all your data again.

10. None of these methods is perfect, some allow you to back-up only small portions, some are slow which is a serious issue if your computer fails every so often, others, like putting the harddisk in someone else's computer involve taking a little bit of risk with the data. So the best advice is: don't limit yourself to one method of safeguarding your data.

[shanek]

Since you have USBs on both devices, that's really the way to go. You need this guy:

http://store3.yimg.com/I/meritline_1769_23157188

USB runs at up to 12Mbps, and you won't be having any other devices on the chain at the time, so copying the files should be about as fast as a traditional office network. This is just one brand, but they're all about the same:

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/meritline/direct-link-cable-usb-to-usb.html

Scroll down and you'll see one that costs a bit more but is about four times as fast as a modern office network because it's USB 2.0.

[Brian]

Sending them to a Yahoo breifcase is the cheapest (free) and maybe least technical way to make sure you have a backup copy. As someone has already mentioned.
I'd recomend you do that if nothing else before you lose them.

[epepke]

While there are some more elegant solutions here, I've found that a USB thumb drive works well.

[shanek]

Originally posted by epepke
While there are some more elegant solutions here, I've found that a USB thumb drive works well.

They are nice for moving files between computers, like when you want to take files from work to home or vice-versa, but personally I wouldn't rely on them as a means of backup.

[epepke]

Originally posted by shanek


They are nice for moving files between computers, like when you want to take files from work to home or vice-versa, but personally I wouldn't rely on them as a means of backup.

The guy was asking how to move files between computers. That this has the ultimate purpose of backup is a secondary issue.

[Soapy Sam]

Luke, why not take the hard drive out, chain it in to the other pc, copy everything from one drive to the other, then put the drive back in the original machine? If you have a long ribbon cable, you might be able to do it without actually removing the drive from the case.

[Earthborn]

Sam, because the other PC is a laptop. Duh! :p

I already wrote that taking the harddisk out and putting in another PC is a definite option, but he shouldn't try it before he tried something else first. Just to be on the safe side.

[ingoa]

If got myself an external disk (USB, 80 GB). I plug it in the desktop or the laptop whenenver it's needed.

[Wudang]

I've used a product called Laplink in the past. Very nice. You can get free versions of it every so often on the CDs on UK PC mags every so often but it's the old version that doesn't support XP. You still need to buy the appropriate cable.

[FFed]

I used to use Direct Cable Connection (DCC) between my desktop and old laptop. Worked great. You just need to buy a DCC cable. There is also lots of help on the net for DCC if you need it.

[Soapy Sam]

Earthborn. I know it's a laptop. So what? You don't have to physically put the drive IN the laptop. You just need the right cable connector. (Which, I grant could be tricky).

Best bet though is a USB2 external hard drive. Shame we don't all live withing borrowing range. Look at the expense we could save.