Free my files!

March 8, 2008 9:29 PM

How do I get ~40GB of data off my outdated PC?

I've been using the same PC for about six years now; I purchased it used in 2002, so I'm not really sure how old it is. It runs pretty well for its age, but it's short on RAM, and I'm sure that it's long overdue for a catastrophic hard-drive failure.

I'm in the process of replacing it with a newer machine (a very generous friend gave me a Mac G4 running OS X), but I'm really not sure how to free my many files (several gigs of MP3s, many irreplaceable photos and documents) from the hard drive on which they are apparently trapped.

Here's the situation:
The old computer is running Windows 98 First Edition. It has no floppy drive, no USB ports, and a read-only CD drive (no burner). It's connected to the Internet, but file transfers tend to be pretty slow. All the files I want (35–40 gigs all told) are sitting on a secondary drive.

Can the hive mind think of any clever ways get the files off the old drive and onto the new one? I'd prefer ideas with a minimum of hardware trickery, as I'm not too familiar with computer guts and would probably cause more problems than I'd fix. I'd prefer a free fix, but I think I'd be willing to spend up to $100 for a surefire solution.

Thanks!

posted by kwaller to computers & internet (20 comments total)

Toss the secondary drive in a USB enclosure and plug it into the mac. The mac *should* be able to read a FAT32 drive from a Win98 PC. If not, someone will correct me shortly.
posted by b1tr0t at 9:34 PM on March 8, 2008

My Mac reads FAT32 just fine. (X 10.4).

Seconding the USB drive enclosure (make sure you get one that accepts a 3.5" desktop hard drive - ATA/IDE/Parallel ATA (depends on which marketing department threw what darts at the terminology board) rather than SATA/Serial ATA. Take out the old drive,
posted by Rendus at 9:48 PM on March 8, 2008

yup
posted by caddis at 9:48 PM on March 8, 2008

Erf. And I even previewed.

Take out the old drive, put it in the enclosure, connect it to the USB ports on the G4. Your old drive will appear as an icon on the desktop.
posted by Rendus at 9:49 PM on March 8, 2008

I don't know if it's the best solution, but there are lots of cheap CD burners you could install.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 9:52 PM on March 8, 2008

Why is no one suggesting crossover cable?

If you have an ethernet port on the PC (looks like a phone jack but slightly wider - it's how you'd connect to DSL or cable internet), you can probably network the Mac and the PC together using a crossover cable. Then you wouldn't have to open up the case, and crossover cables are cheaper than hard drive enclosures.
posted by needs more cowbell at 9:54 PM on March 8, 2008

Why is no one suggesting crossover cable?

Because it's an overly complicated method that relies greatly on one's understanding of networking, windows components, and the like. Network admins can do this type of transfer in their sleep, for average users (people who would ask this question to begin with) it's a little beyond their abilities. Plus, crossover cables are not that common and the confusion between standard and crossover pin-outs can create headaches for the end user if they aren't exactly sure what they are looking for.

True, in some laptops removing the hard drive, installing it in a USB box (making sure you get the right form factor box), and doing the transfer can also be daunting, but it's a process which a lot of people have experience with and the hardware is readily available just about anywhere computer hardware is sold.

A simpler (but perhaps more costly solution) would be to buy a USB dual layer DVD drive and burn the data over five or six dvds.
posted by wfrgms at 10:14 PM on March 8, 2008

"Why is no one suggesting crossover cable?" - posted by needs more cowbell at 10:54 PM

Easy: (takes about 15 to 30min, depending on your dexterity), requires no special knowledge.
1.) remove PC case
2.) unplug and remove old hard drive
3.) install old hard drive into empty (new) external drive enclosure
4.) plug external drive enclosure into new computer - wait a few seconds - access your files

Hard: (need to understand networking, esp. when it involves networking 2 different OS's over a crossover cable)
1.) buy a crossover cable
2.) Learn the basic concepts of "networking" and understand the difference between auto-DHCP and manually assigned IP addresses, subnet masks and gateways. Learn how routing works especially the differences between standard lan routing and PC-to-PC crossover routing.
3.) Manually (attempt) to configure Win98 1st edition network settings, realizing that when it prompts you for the original install CD that you dont have \CABS on the hard drive and also cant find your original CD. Curse and begin calling friends to see if anyone still has a Win98 1st edition cd. Wait on the phone until they finish laughing.
4.) Realize you just wasted 2+ hours when you could have just bought an external enclosure, popped the drive in it and have been asleep by now.

I may be mis-judging the OP.. but in all the cases like this I've seen, its far easier and faster to pop the drive out and use an external enclosure than it is to try reconfiguring networking on 2 different OS's through a crossover cable.
posted by jmnugent at 10:26 PM on March 8, 2008 [1 favorite]

THe middle ground between crossover and usb-drive is to just use native windows file sharing and samba on the mac to read the share and copy everything.

Plug the mac into the router.
Share the root of the drive on the PC.
Open the network drive smb://ipaddressofPC
copy and paste to your hearts content.

I do agree that its easier to find someone who can put a drive in an enclosure (geek squad) than it is to find someone who can do basic networking (not geek squard).
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:54 PM on March 8, 2008

this may be a strange human resources solution instead of technological, but can the friend who gave you the G4 help you out? or another friend?

in return you can buy him/her some beer or whatever beverage is in vogue these days :) plus, i'm 100% sure (unless you drink a ton) that beer would cost less than $100.

barring that i'm nthing the "buy external enclosure" solution.
posted by melvinwang at 11:39 PM on March 8, 2008

The USB enclosure is definitely the simplest, most straightforward thing you could do in my opinion, without mucking around with the innards of your new machine.

I happen to have a G4 tower kicking around and popped it open...this model accepts IDE hard drives so I would expect that a direct hookup with zero dollars spent should work, but I have not tried it, and if the Mac were to say "Hey, let's initialize that hard drive!," you would want to say "NO!"

These instructions should only be followed with a healthy sense of adventure and caution, and a very strong desire to spend nothing on the simpler drive-enclosure solution proposed previously. Of course both computers should be shut down, unplugged, and of course you'll be using a static wrist strap. (I honestly skip the strap but constantly touch the metal chassis of the computer to discharge static.)

An IDE hard drive is powered by a power cable (a white connector, typically) and communicates using a data cable (a fat grey ribbon cable, typically).

Depending on the jumper settings on your PC hard drive (master/slave, likely slave if it's secondary and was connected to the same ribbon cable as your primary drive) you can do the following (and of course you can change the jumper setting if you're up for it).

SLAVE: Connect the PC drive to the same ribbon cable hooked up to the existing hard drive in the Mac. This cable should have an available connector. You won't be disconnecting the existing hard drive in the Mac (I'm assuming it only has one installed).

I had plenty of available power cable leads to use -- keep in mind the ribbon cable and power cables only plug in one way; the power cable orientation is pretty obvious once you look at it, and for the ribbon cable there's a notch cut out to guide you. Bent pins suck. The power cable either fits or doesn't, you don't have to worry about voltages.

MASTER: Disconnect the ribbon and power cables from the CD/DVD drive and use them (master/cable select) to temporarily hook up the drive. Or: the ribbon cable actually runs along to the motherboard, connecting to a completely different side of the motherboard 90 degrees from the ribbon cable mentioned in the SLAVE scenario; you could borrow the ribbon cable from your PC, hook it directly up to that port on the motherboard, and borrow one of the existing power cables without ever having to fiddle directly with the CD drive.

In either situation you can likely get away with not permanently mounting your PC hard drive inside the G4, but leaving the tower sitting on its side so that the drive is just resting in a stable position, ideally label-side-down, on top of a few sheets of paper or something non-conductive (you're carefully avoiding touching any exposed circuitboard on the hard drive to any other metal). I tend to live dangerously, and perhaps these instructions will only serve to prod you into buying the enclosure (you can always spring for a better drive down the road and re-use the enclosure) or solicitiing help from your friend :)

Transfer those files ASAP and don't get comfortable with the idea of keeping them on the soon-to-die drive if you do decide to mount it.
posted by lordaych at 11:56 PM on March 8, 2008

wfrgms: The poster specified that his old computer does not have any USB ports, so the USB DVD burner is out.

On the other hand, correct me if I'm wrong, but most newer Macs auto-compensate for whatever Ethernet cable you should be using, so he should be able to connect the two computers with any Ethernet cable he has lying around.
posted by qvtqht at 4:29 AM on March 9, 2008

Scratch that, it is probably not the case with this Mac.

I like the "ask the friend for help" idea, if it's an option. The OP may also be able to just borrow a router from this or another friend and do it that way; He may even already have one. All of this assumes, of course, that the old computer has an Ethernet port -- not a given.

Also, I would like to use this opportunity to remind the OP to think about a backup solution. It sounds like that's a lot of irreplaceable data on that one 40GB drive. "It would be a shame if anything happened to it..."
posted by qvtqht at 4:38 AM on March 9, 2008

take the drive out of the pc. open the G4 and plug the drive into one of the free spots on the bottom floor. start up the computer.

that's it.

not sure what era the G4 is, but many of them had slow USB. a better option if you go external is a FireWire enclosure. costs a bit more, but it's faster than even 'fast' USB. (theoretically USB is 'faster', but reality says otherwise)

you could leave the extra drive in there and use it, if it's fairly young. back it up, of course.
posted by KenManiac at 8:20 AM on March 9, 2008

If the older computer can run an ftp server (I recommend filezilla), and the 2 computers are plugged into a router, that can be very easy. That is what I did (between 2 PCs) recently, and it was quite painless to configure.
posted by rasputin98 at 10:12 AM on March 9, 2008

Jesus Christ, people, transferring 40 Gb of data over ethernet is going to be an order of magnitude slower than by HDD->USB. If the data needed to be accessible during transfer, that would be one thing, but I think in the OPs case let's try follow the KISS principle.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:15 PM on March 9, 2008

plus, if it's got 98 FE on it, there's a good chance it'll only have 10 Base T. yeah, it'll only take a couple weeks to copy 40 GB.

seriously. put it in the G4. nothing to buy, nothing to break, nothing to lose. there's probably 2 empty bays there, maybe 3.

you may have to move 1 little jumper to make it a slave rather than master, but that takes about 4 seconds.
posted by KenManiac at 12:29 PM on March 9, 2008

This works great, I was using this the other day to do the same thing you are.
posted by CFMartin at 7:30 PM on March 9, 2008

Belkin USB-to-USB transfer cable. Makes each computer see the other as a drive.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 9:15 PM on March 9, 2008

OP here. Quick clarification: I'm female. (Also, I'm actually more computer-savvy than the kind Mac gifter, but I am bribing a geeky friend for help by plying her with beers and pork chops. I just don't want to abuse her generosity if I can fix the problem m'self.)

Looks like the USB enclosure will be thrifty, stable, and relatively foolproof for file transfer. If it doesn't work, I now have other options to explore.

Thanks so much--I really appreciate the assistance!
posted by kwaller at 9:40 AM on March 10, 2008