Mp3 File Transfer

May 23, 2005 7:56 PM

I have aprox. 200 mp3s saved on my desktop's hard drive. I want to transfer them to my notebook. The pc is W98 and the notebook is XP.

I bought a thumb drive, but it isn't compatible with W98. I tried emailing them to myself, but I quickly realized that would be too time consuming. Same with burning them onto CDs. Does anyone know of any migration software or a site where I could upload the files and then download them to my notebook?

posted by Juicylicious to computers & internet (15 comments total)

Can't you just Ethernet the two machines together? You really don't want to upload a GB of data.
posted by nicwolff at 8:05 PM on May 23, 2005

Google for 'network 98 xp crossover cable', and you'll get everything you need to connect the two machines together with a single cord.

Alternatively, if you own a router/hub/switch of some kind, you can use that to transfer the files. What is your setup at home?
posted by Jairus at 8:10 PM on May 23, 2005

You should be able to burn them onto ONE cd, in data format (not audio) if they are normal-length songs, so you're really just being lazy. I'm not impressed.

Let's start with what's built into windows: file and printer sharing. Make sure the two computers are connected with an ethernet cable. Buy a card for the old desktop if needed. Connect. Then, make a new folder in your "My documents" on the XP machine. Right click on it, select sharing, then allow sharing, and "allow others to change my files". On the windows 98 machine, open "network neighborhood", browse to the XP machine, and drag all the MP3s onto the shared folder. done.

OR: download an FTP server for either of the machines, or get an xdrive account, or ifolder, or any of the many other solutions. Or just keep emailing them.
posted by wzcx at 8:11 PM on May 23, 2005

Another option: borrow somebody's (98-compatible) thumbdrive, borrow somebody's iPod, figure out a workaround to get your thumbdrive to work w/98, etc. etc., that kind of thing.
posted by box at 8:25 PM on May 23, 2005

Was also going to suggest burning to cd but to answer the actual question, Folder Share will do what you're looking for.
posted by undertone at 8:59 PM on May 23, 2005

Assuming you mean a count of 200 individual mp3s (at about 3-5 megs each), burning them to a CD would probably take less time than transferring them across a 10 megabit or 11 megabit (wireless 802.11b) connection, and possibly may still be faster then a 100 megabit ethernet transfer, considering how badly a stock Windows 98 system (and possibly XP) handles network overhead and throughput.

If you meant 200 gigabytes (tens of thousands of mp3s, 30,000-50,000 mp3s) welcome to data management hell. I'd go buy a couple of big drives and put them on the IDE bus inside the computer, or in a firewire or USB 2.0 box on a robust system. I can't wait for affordable 50-100 GB multilayer blu-ray DVD burners and blank media, but by then they'll probably have single-drive terabyte drives and my cup will be even more full.
posted by loquacious at 9:32 PM on May 23, 2005

Juicylicious, I had that many Mp3s in 1998. Burn a CD.
posted by Dean Keaton at 9:35 PM on May 23, 2005

Just to mention about the thumb drive not working: it's not the thumb drive, it's your version of Windows. Win98 barely supports USB anything (does it even support USB keyboards & mice?), and Win98 SE is hardly any better (it does support them, but not reliably).

So if you want to use a thumb drive you need an OS that supports USB drives & devices, not the other way 'round...
posted by Pinback at 9:47 PM on May 23, 2005

You should be able to use a Linux LiveCD, burn it, put it in the CD drive, reboot, pop the thumb drive in, copy the MP3s to it, and you're set. I'd suggest using an Ubuntu (ISO, 650MB) LiveCD for this.
posted by SemiSophos at 10:02 PM on May 23, 2005

You could email them to yourself fairly quickly by zipping them all up and using a website like yousendit.com. I don't think 500 mp3s is more than 1gb, and it might take a while to upload, but ithat's always an option.
posted by apple scruff at 10:10 PM on May 23, 2005

I'd just put them both on the same network (such as the internal network for your home router) and then install an ftp server on one of them (such as FileZilla Server). Then, just lookup the ip address of the "server" via ipconfig and connect to that with an ftp client on the other box.
posted by Alex Handcoding at 10:35 PM on May 23, 2005

Crossover cable, or post them on a temporary file storage site, or Gmail.
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 1:23 AM on May 24, 2005

Get off your lazy ass and burn them on CD. I average 11 albums on a CD at 128kbps, and if each album averages 10 songs then two CDs is all you need to burn.

Besides, it also means you'll have backed up your music, so if something tragic happens to your hard drive (such as in my case the PC gets stolen), you'll still have a copy of your precious tunes.

Other than that, use a network.
posted by furtive at 4:32 AM on May 24, 2005

If you're running W98 SE, you should be able to find a thumb drive or flash MP3 player that includes the Mass Storage driver that should work. My old Pogo AudioRave worked fine with SE. I don't think that you will have any luck with straight Win98, though.
posted by rfs at 5:34 AM on May 24, 2005

Depending on what the mp3s are, it's very possible that they're already available to download somewhere, possibly after installing p2p software of some kind to the notebook.

Or you could buy a 2.5"-to-3.5" drive adapter, remove the notebook's hard drive, temporarily attach it to the desktop, transfer the files and then reattach the drive to the notebook (this is a whole lot more work than just getting a crossover cable).

Or connect the audio line-out on the desktop to the audio line-in on the notebook, then use Windows Sound Recorder (or Audacity or CoolEdit or something) to record the files (besides being slow and an all-around terrible idea, this will most likely result in a loss of sound quality).

Really, though, just get a crossover cable, burn a CD, or put them all in a .zip and use YouSendIt.
posted by box at 5:47 AM on May 24, 2005