I do apologize if this question has been brought up before. In that case, please refer me to the answer of that other question. I did search for answers but most of them seem to deal with migrations, like moving from operating system x to operating system y, or moving from an old computer to a new one but wanting to preserve all the programs, settings, bookmarks, et. al.
I have some files on an old PATA internal hard drive of an old PC that I would like to move over to a new PC. I think simple file and folder copy operation will do, but I am not sure how to approach this or what method to use to get the best results.
The old PC can only use PATA internal hard drives. So I can't just plug in an internal SATA hard drive and do a drag-and-drop from one to the other. The new PC has both PATA and SATA support. But since the PATA drive is a system disk I can't access the files.
The old PC has a DVD burner and I thought about using it to copy the files over one DVD at a time. But a DVD can only fit lite 4.3 GB. It's not enough, and requires several DVD discs.
The old PC doesn't even have a LAN port. However, I do have an Intel PCI network card that I might be able to use. The only other communications ports available is a COM port and an LPT port.
How do I get those files over to the new PC? What kind of transfer speeds can I expect if I use a serial cable between them? The new PC has a COM port. Or should I try to get that LAN card installed and hook them up P2P? Or should I mount the PATA drive inside the new PC and try getting ownership rights?
Update
I have decided to connect the two computers directly to each other using a crossover Ethernet cable. For that, I had to install a network card to the old computer. The card works as expected, i.e. I can use it to connect to Internet and surf the web.
Now the tricky part of getting the two computers to communicate to each other.
PC1 (the new computer)
IP 125.1.1.1
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Windows Vista
PC2
IP 125.1.1.2
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Windows XP
I tried pinging from XP to Vista and it worked. Four packets are sent and four packets are received. It works the other way around as well, from Vista to XP.
I can see the XP computer in Vista but I can't see the Vista computer in XP. Also, when I try to access the XP computer from Vista, I get a prompt asking for user name and password. I believe I am typing in the correct username and password but I can't get access. I even tried changing the password on the XP computer but to no avail. How can I disable password protection for network connections in XP?
Can someone please post an answer on how to establish a direct network connection between two Windows computers and how to configure them?