[tsk1979]

How about I zip it with compression set to "1" which is weakest value. Data to move is around 30GB on each parition(3 total partitions to move!)

[dadu]

How about Windows File and settings Wizard, over network or Direct cable connection, I have used that to migrate from XP to Vista seamlessly earlier.

You can use it for your windows 7, yes 90 GB will take time but with ease.

Windows 7 Features: Windows Easy Transfer

I would suggest using a direct LAN cable connection instead of wireless.

[2500cc]

On Windows 7 machine do the following before you initiate the file copy. Doing this increases the speed considerably.



1. Click Start – Control Panel – Programs – Trun Windows features on or off


2. Uncheck “Remote Differential Compression” and click OK.
3. Restart the computer and you should see an improved performance with copying files.


For Info on RDC check the following link:


About Remote Differential Compression (Windows)


Regards,
Rajesh

[S_U_N]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

How about I zip it with compression set to "1" which is weakest value. Data to move is around 30GB on each parition(3 total partitions to move!)

Sounds good. Assuming that you are zipping it to a fast hard disk, it should not take long.

[SirAlec]

Originally Posted by vikram_d

This is your best bet. But you will not need a router. Just use a normal network cable and connect both laptops and give them the IP addresses that you have decided and keep them on the same workgroup. If your laptops are equipped with gigabit network adaptors then the transfer should happen relatively quickly.

Normal network cable won't work if you are not using a switch. Its a cross cable.

@ TSK

how much data are we talking about.

If its really huge it will be a nightmare over a network. BTW I use Terracopy & Burst Copy. the later one is a paid software other one is free for home use.

Following is what I would have personally done.
But if its really huge I would have opened the XP machine put the Hdd in a SATA firewire/usb enclosure (beleive me in delhi its really cheap at NP) fit it another machine and transfer the file, through Terracopy ofcourse.

[pranavt]

30-100GB should be easy peasy I move around 1TB once every fortnight.

Don't bother compressing that much. You also have to decompress it on the other side and you will need double the space for the decompressed copy till you delete the zipped files. For that much data, doing any extra work will just add to the time taken. Use one of the methods recommended here. At full pelt on a 100mbps network, it should copy around 8-9MB/s. 90GB of data should be done in a little over 3 hours if left unattended.

Use one of the file copying applications like Teracopy, they will allow you to queue the copying and add/remove from the queue.

[prajwalkashyap]

Just pull out the HDD from the source PC and insert it into the destination PC and copy/paste. That would be the fastest way to transfer the files. No need of zipping/unzipping, networking, sharing, un-firewalling, etc. SirAlec's idea of using an enclosure is also good, but that will limit the speed of data transfer to the speed of the USB port. Direct data transfer speeds between 2 SATA drives directly connected to the mobo is the fastest.

Every now and then I copy about 40,000 folders with over a million files in them. I have tried ghosting, cloning, networking, file sharing, zipping/unzipping, intermediary hdd/ipod/zune/usb hdd/etc. None of that was as fast as this method. 30GB should not take more than 1-1.5 hours if done undisturbed. Use a software like Terracopy else a single corrupt file could abort the entire process at anytime of the transfer.

Prajwal

[tsk1979]

I think I will put my windows XP HDD in a SATA enclosure and use burst copy to transfer files. How much time for around 40GB of data? 2-3 hours or more?

[clevermax]

Tanveer, why don't you get an external USB HDD and copy the data? I copied about 110 GB of data from one laptop to another using an external HDD. (Vista to Win7) It was a simple Copy-Paste.

First copy operation from Laptop1 to ext. HDD took about 2 hours, and then the second copy operation from ext. HDD to laptop2 took roughly more than an hour.

[leadf00t]

@Tanveer : Assuming that you haven't done the transfer yet I will tell you 2 general rules for any file copy based on which you will be able to do the transfer in the shortest possible time.

1) Transferring one Big file (zip) is always way way faster than transferring many smaller files since along with the transfer there is also a lot of file system overheads that both machines have to work on. So go the zip file way if you can create one big zip file of your data on you source computer. Discounting the fact that zipping will also take some time.
2) windows file sharing using SMB is a extremely inefficient way to transfer/ copy data. The fastest protocol is FTP by a large margin . I was made for data transfer and huge amounts of it.
3) Wired is faster than wireless due to the inherent bandwidth capabilities but with the above 2 mentioned reasons, the advantaged gained doesn't make too much of a difference.

Hence i would suggest you the below option

1) Zip all files to one big zip file.
2) Install FILEZILLA ( like suggested earlier ) server on your source computer. Has a pretty straightforward interface just create a user id and assign the source folder (where u have the fiels to be copied) as home path
3) Install FILEZILLA client on your target pc and login with the credentials created in step 2.
4) use you wireless transfer since that will be more convenient than finding and doing the physical wiring and network setup.

This solution will last you in the future for a seamless transfer of huge data.

the hassles of copy to a hdd or installing the XP HDD in a sata enclosure is too time consuming to the above process. I also used the same exact procedure when i installed a new hdd in my laptop. since i couldn't connect 2hdd's in my laptop I moved my laptop hdd to the desktop and worked with the above solution. my desktop has the old laptop hdd permanently installed.

[vikram_d]

Originally Posted by SirAlec

Normal network cable won't work if you are not using a switch. Its a cross cable.

Normal network cable will work. All the network adaptors sold today are auto sensing. They work with both cross as well as straight cables. I have connected my laptop to my desktop PC using a normal cable (without a switch in between) and it works just fine.

[clevermax]

Originally Posted by vikram_d

Normal network cable will work. All the network adaptors sold today are auto sensing. They work with both cross as well as straight cables. I have connected my laptop to my desktop PC using a normal cable (without a switch in between) and it works just fine.

Me too tried that, yeah it just works fine.

[shreyasma]

1. Download and install 'IPMSG' on both machines
2. Turn firewall off on both machines
3. Connect both machines using an Ethernet cable
4. Open IPMSG (From system tray) on the machine that has to be backed up
5. Drag & drop the files into IPMSG and select the other machine in the list and click 'Send'
6. Receive the files and specify the destination to save. Dont forget to check the 'Lump' option.

[SirAlec]

Originally Posted by vikram_d

Normal network cable will work. All the network adaptors sold today are auto sensing. They work with both cross as well as straight cables. I have connected my laptop to my desktop PC using a normal cable (without a switch in between) and it works just fine.

Yup its called auto-mdix. but it will only work if both the computers have gigabit ethernet card. And the duplex settings should be set to auto (default).

But again this will still be very slow for large amount of data.