Mass transfer of data?

[michelevit]

waaah- stop complaining.
 
i think all of these are good solutions.
no need to gripe about any of these solutions.
here are the different options i recommend.

1. burn cdr of the data, that way you can transfer AND have a backup. considering that cdrs are less than a dime
each, it wont break your wallet. 
2. purchase a large cheap hard drive from newegg.com, outpost.com or frys and mount in in a usb enclosure.
(this is cost you 100-150 bucks and you will have a drive that you can use as a backup. You can also take
this to friends houses to transfer data. This is what I do. I also have several images of each of my computers for
back up reasons.
3. set up network provided you have NICs in each computer.

why would setting up a network be your third choice, and spending $100+ on unnecessary hardware be your second choice?  And as great as external enclosures are (I have 2), there are not great for backup purposes.  Hard drive + mobile applications + potential to drop/bump/shake = disaster.

i didn't mean to imply an order, i just was listing the different options. i like the external
hard drive because i keep all my music, pics and data on all my computers. i just copy and paste and 20-30 minutes later all my data is moved. No burning cds or dealing with scratched or lost disks. No flipping through binders for the right disk and i can take it anywhere.

[clhug]

Bah. Don't listen to them.

DVDs. 

Get a 720K formatted DOS floppy disk, and just keep transferring the stuff piece by piece. It's great exercise running back and forth 30 thousand times. 

Make sure to 5 1/4" disks - they're more reliable...

I'm sure there would be some way to attach an old tape player from a c64.  Imagine actually being able to hear your data transferring!!!

I know you're a young buck, so you may need to look some of these up and look at the capacity/transfer rate to fully appreciate the joke. 

   Now that's funny!  I actually HAVE a tape player from a c64!!!  You just gave me a project to work on! 

[TMS]

I would second the crossover cable. You can get one at most shops for less than $10. One end goes into the mame box the other to your regular pc. Set both ip addesses for the same subnet ie 192.168.1.x

Lastly on either machine Start - Run - \\othercomputername\c$
Now you are tranferring data @ ~100mbs.

[BobA]

A crossover cable for your network connectors is the cheapest way but I use a USB Hardrive as it is easier to move the HDD then move a computers close enough to use a crossover cable.  The USB harddrive also serves as a backup of my important files.  If you buy an enclosure and a 120 GB harddrive in the US you should be able to get away with about $100.  The preassembled units seem to cost a bit more.

Boba

[jfunk]

This is pretty cheap ThinkGeek Link

No clue if it works, but sounds neat.. 

Thanx.

[leapinlew]

Assuming you have a 100mb network - I agree that transferring data through the network would probably be the easiest. This route, you don't have to touch 1 hard drive.

If you didn't have a 100mb network and your computer has USB2 and you can do your enclosure (or usb to IDE), that would also work in decent time.

If you didn't have either a 100mb network or USB2, than moving 1 hard drive from one computer to another would be ideal. 1 thing about jumpers though. I don't know why everyone always installs the second temporary hard drive on the master channel as a slave. Simply unplug your optical drive(s) and use an IDE plug off the secondary channel. No jumpers need to be configured and no risk of things going bad with your system drive.

I would expect transfer times for 20gb to be(assuming 7200RPM drives):

100mb network - 20 minutes
USB2 - 20-30 minutes
Slaved Hard Drive - 20 minutes

10mb network - 10 hours
usb1 - 10-15 hours

Good luck. Your best bet is to pick a method based on time and than learn how to do it.