fastest way to transfer a gang of data to an external HD??

this is probably the dumbest question but i would like to know...next weekend i am going to buy an external 500 gig hard drive for all my data...i have about 80 gigs of stuff i need to transfer from my pc to this external(usb drive type is what i am getting).
i have a lot of very obscure music and musical scores, things like that...i fi lost those i would NEVER get them back...

my desktop has been messing up and i am either gonna scrub it clean or get a new one but i want this external either way..

what i was gonna do is just plug in the external, go to say the music folder and then just copy/paste it over...
i imagine this is going to take a LONG time...

is this the best/easiest/most effiecient way to do this?

after i plan to either scrub my pc clean or get a new one...
also, when i am ready to access my music how is it gonna work..

say i am on my pc, surfing the net and i want to jam...i have no music on the pc but i go have my media player on it...can i just plug in my external hd and go to the song and click/play or do i need to have the media player installed on the external hd?
know what i mean?

thanks for the help duders

When moving files onto an external HD, all you should need to do is drag the folder and drop it in the external directory. If you want, you can create a backup folder to put everything in that you want backed up. If your current HD is close to being full, it will take a while for everything to back-up. 80GB is a lot of data.



If you want to listen to music that's in your external, all you have to do is double click. There's no need to install a media player to your external as long as you have one installed on your primary drive.

there's no way of copying files that's really any faster than another. like the AP said, just drag n' drop. your music will play fine and your documents will still open. SOME applications will create documents that are basically lists of files to include in a project. in that case if the locations have changed (moving from the internal to the external) it may not find them. i think i've only seen this with things like video/audio editing apps.

just make sure you get this stuff:

everything in my documents and other folders that might contain documents or music
any misc files on the desktop you might want
favorites/bookmarks
saves for games (might be in program files)

don't worry about backing up programs. most of the time when you install an application it puts files in the windows directory, adds registry entries, etc. none of that will exist in a fresh windows environment and they probably won't run. just make sure you have the discs/install files to get it back on there.

you could save some time by just putting the old hard drive in the new computer as a seconday/slave drive if you decided to go that route.

[edit on 12-11-2007 by an0maly33]

reply to post by Boondock78


Boot into safe mode if you want it to be blazing fast. Also, make sure you plug the drive into a USB 2.0 port.

How to boot into safe mode:

--Press F8 when the computer boots and you get the "Starting Window..." line. It's just before the Windows logo comes up.

Why boot into safe mode? Because safe mode usually just loads the minimum required to run Windows. It's the OS in it's most basic form.

acutally, safe mode also disregards a lot of drivers. he may (probably will) get reduced performance if the motherboard chipset drivers aren't loading.

In my experience backing up over 400GB of data on my PC to my external 500
GB HD only takes a few hours...80 GB (depending on the computer) of data shouldn't be too bad.

[edit on 11/12/2007 by kinglizard]

reply to post by an0maly33


Good point. What's your motherboard model, Boondock? If it's an Intel Desktop Board, disregard my suggestion (hence why I hate Intel boards... too many drivers).

thanks for the fast reply's guys.
motherboard type.
i don't know...
it's a presario so that will probably tell you.

i like the idea of the external HD cause i can take it with me and i don't have to leave it plugged in...my precious data will be safe....i figure every month or two as i collect more stuff, i will just move it over.

i just was not sure the best way to do it....
i did back up about 60 gigs of mma stuff onto discs so i will also be putting all that on the external.
so i would first have to copy it from the disc to the pc, then drag and drop.

i have a ton of live shows from frank zappa that are just not around. same deal for phish.
discographies and obscure photos...my musical scores are probably my most precious though...
i also have a lot of videos that i have edited, a pretty huge gif collection...about 10k suicide girls pics....


see also, we go to my in laws house a lot and they have a pc and they are connected via dsl but compared to mine, it is slooow.
so if i could have ALL of my data on that external, when we go over there when i get bored, i can just go to their pc and plug my external in and i will have all my music and all my fights and highlights at the ready..

oh yeah, i also have about 50k guitar pro tabs...i can NOT lose those...



thanks a lot for the help all.

what i will do is take all i want to move over and put it in a folder and then before i crash, just drag and drop and let it transfer over.
next night i'll do the same to my mma stuff and i'll be good to go.

it's gonna be cool. i will have all my precious[/gollum]data with me all the time. even at my bro in laws house, i want to show him stuff...maybe a fight something..

now, BAM

Originally posted by Boondock78
so i would first have to copy it from the disc to the pc, then drag and drop.

You can actually drag and drop straight from your discs to your external too!

Originally posted by Boondock78
it's a presario so that will probably tell you.

Hmm.. if that's the case, disregard my suggestion. It would probably result in slower transfers (as per anomaly's explanation).

Edit to add: remember to burn those guitar tabs into a CD, and then make copies of that CD. Leave one copy at your brother-in-law's for safekeeping.

The number one rule of data storage is -- make backups, backup, backup, and backup some more.

[edit on 12-11-2007 by Beachcoma]

cool yo.

this is gonna work out real nice....drag and drop right to my external
thats what i am talking about..

so here is what i will do.
i have all my mma backed up and all my zappa backed up but thats it.
my tabs, my suicide girls, my gif's, and the rest of the music is all on the pc.

so, i will put it all on the external, then i will still have the mma discs and i will duplicate. then will duplicate the zappa.


then, i will take everything that is on the external and burn all that onto dvd's and put em in jewel cases.
so thats a few copies.

i am also in the process of printing my scores but it takes a lot of ink so it is slow going...
i have been printing out a certain book of scores and some of the songs in this one are 25-35-40 pages long...
then i am going to seperate them my generea and such and hole punch em and bind em in leather, carve a design on the leather binder and then stain it, then seal it up for my son.

accurate transcriptions are hard to come by. least the stuff i get

Suicide girls? That sounds familiar. Where did I come across that before?

Just make sure you get a decent drive, something with a 16 meg cache and even go for a 10k rpm for blazing speed.

Originally posted by Beachcoma
Suicide girls? That sounds familiar. Where did I come across that before?

buncha chicks with tats and piercings that pose nude or in their undies.
they were pretty popular on the net for a bit.

not so much anymore though.

i dig em though

Originally posted by Boondock78

Originally posted by Beachcoma
Suicide girls? That sounds familiar. Where did I come across that before?

buncha chicks with tats and piercings that pose nude or in their undies.
they were pretty popular on the net for a bit.

not so much anymore though.

i dig em though

Links please!No ive got them on myspace.Do they really do nude though coz ive talked to one a coupla times and i never even knew.

Originally posted by Azador
Links please!

That type of posting/link exchange usually results in account termination.

Originally posted by Azador
.Do they really do nude though coz ive talked to one a coupla times and i never even knew.

uh, hell yeah they do nude...
you want i should give a link to my hd or what?

hahahahahaah

check out nala...her name comes off the top of my head as one of the girls who do.

LOTS of them do and LOTS of them pose together....painting each other or something....

transfering my files right now....got a 320 gig external, usb2.0, 7200 rpm for $98.

nice and sleek and it's going a LOT faster than i thought it would

I'd suggest just leaving your external drive plugged in all the time and downloading an automatic backup program to handle it for you. Just on a quick search...

www.dirfile.com...
Easy File Backup looks like what you need (and it's free).



p.s. technically firewire is faster than usb, but in reality there usually isn't a huge difference. I can back up the contents of my HD (~20gigs) in about 10 minutes and that's on a laptop so it shouldn't take a massive amount of time to backup your stuff.

Originally posted by Boondock78

my precious data will be safe....i figure every month or two as i collect more stuff, i will just move it over.

Just don't forget that your external HDD is not immortal, and it might die some day too. If you want to be really safe, you'll burn extra copies of your most precious files to cds and/or dvds.