I have a 320 GB desktop into which i want to transfer data from my laptop having 80GB hard disk.The things i need to transfer are in GBs. Doing so with pendrives is a little hectic, moreover i have just a 4gigs one.My friend has got a cable (with which he gets connected to the internet) which has same kind of plugs at the 2 ends. With that, i am able to connect the two computers together.The question is, how do i make data transfer between these computers. Please give me a step by step procedure 'cause i am a novice in this aspect.Also what are the cable and port called??
Your friend has what's called an 'ethernet' cable, which will be able to transfer data at usually around 100mb a second (or one tenth of a gigabyte every second). Keep in mind it must be a 'crossover' type ethernet cable in order to allow transfer between the two computers. 1. Make sure you have a crossover type cable. 2. Attach one end (doesn't matter which) to the ethernet socket on the back of your desktop PC. Then attach the other end to your laptop's ethernet socket. 3. Then just run the Network Setup Wizard (your computer will open this automatically when it sees that you've wired up both computers) and it will take you from there.
If you already have a router in your house for sharing the internet, you can also use this to transfer the files between your computers. Get both the laptop and desktop connected to the internet. It doesn't matter if you use WiFi or an ethernet cable, but if you have a choice, use ethernet because it'll generally be faster. Now, on the laptop, simply make the folders or the entire hard drive shareable on the network. If you're using some flavor of Windows, open Explorer, right-click on the hard drive icon, and click on Share Once you've done this, open Explorer on your Desktop and click on Network Places and you should see your laptop's drive there. You can now browse and copy things over. (hint: Do your transfers in smallish batches - Windows will choke if you try transferring huge numbers of file/directories at once.) If you don't have a home network like this alreadywell, go get a router. They're $30, and make it easy for your computers to share your internet connection, as well as other things like printers, each others' hard drives (play music/video files stored on one computer through your other computer, etc.) If you really can't do this, you can connect the computers to make a small network. You will need a Crossover Ethernet cable. This looks like a phone cable but the connector is fatter. Also, the words Crossover Cable MUST appear on the cable, otherwise it's just a standard ethernet cable and won't work for this application. Locate the ethernet port on your laptop and desktop. Again, it looks like a phone plug, but it's wider. Connect the cable to each of them. Next you'll need to run the Network Setup Wizard on both computers. You'll be doing what's called an ad-hoc network. Follow the directions. If it asks you for an IP address, use something like 10.10.10.xxx (pick a different number between 1 and 254 for each computer.) Now go through the process above about sharing the laptop's hard drive.
