I've got two old computers, one XP the other Vista, and they're both beyond their sell-by date and I want to transfer ONLY documents and music to my new Windows 7 computer - no other settings or programs, just documents and music.
Is it really just as simple as saving them onto a USB flash drive, plugging said drive into Win 7 machine and then copying them onto it?
I've heard tell of "taking ownership" - what does that mean and will I need it?
TIA
Pretty much although you might need a rather large flash drive if you have a terabyte or so of documents and images to move over.
You might be better off configuring them as a network and allowing the Win7 machine to access the others data with readonly access. If you have a router or Wifi then it is easy otherwise you could buy a crossover cable as minimal hardware for moving material over.
Browse to the stuff you want to copy drag and drop (and wait an age for it to complete if large volumes of data are involved).
Not sure I would trust one that only cost 17p though.
Vista will probably prove a bit more tetchy about letting you share and see its drives on the network but XP should be pretty easy to link up.
Dave spake thus:
To answer the last part of your question, files on an NTFS filesystem as used by XP/Vista/Win7 etc. have Access Control Lists which tell the operating system which user 'owns' the file (normally the user who created it) and which user(s) have access to read from or write to (or erase or see the filename or... you get the idea) the file. "Taking Ownership" means going into the file security properties and telling the OS that you are the new "owner". Right-click on a file in Windows Explorer, hit Properties, Security tab and you can see what's what.
If you copy to a USB stick this will by default be formatted as FAT32 which does not support these options. When you copy it to your new machine the OS will assign default access rights, if you're logging on with admin rights or you log in as the same user who copied the files over you won't have a problem.
Or, to paraphrase, don't worry about it :-)
Dave has brought this to us :
Thanks guys, especially Scion who said "don't worry about it" lol
more or less, yes.
dunno. does windows 7 incorporate the concept of file ownership?
If you have files that are worth transferring, have you considered an external hardrive as a back up, which could also be used for transferring them. They are cheap enough nowadays.
Of course it does and ACLs as well, they have been in there for over a decade. Windows is nowhere near as crude as linux users like to claim.
Only under NTFS
So it only took MS 30 years to realise they needed it.
Crude doesn't even begin to describe it..
Win has had file ownership since NT in the 90s IIRC. If I dont RC, it certainly did in win2k. Windows isnt so much crude, more just antisocial and bonkers.
NT
Don't you just love how a simple question gets blown out of proportion on usenet lol
There's 5GB of documents and music so according to Scion's earlier reply, if I put that on my 16GB capacity, FAT32 formatted, USB flash drive, I'll be fine and won't worry about it :')
It would be safer on more than one.
In message , "dennis@home" writes
what was the OP saying about how things get complicated :-)
He is just copying the files over, he will still have the originals,
Just load them onto a spare drive of any type then upload them to Win 7 .....
That's the worrying thing, he doesn't have a backup to restore without first copying it. If he were doing it properly he would just restore the backup onto the new machine.
Well over a decade indeed. It says here first NT release was 1993, so it's coming up on 20.
Andy
Indeed. If his hard drive fails before the new machine arrives and he has copied them over where will his data be then?
Andy
I doubt most people would class NT as 'windows'
I have noticed that most linux users who deride windows only talk about windows 3.1.
I have noticed that you talk s**te.
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