I'm Selling my pc and want 2 keep all my files, Whats the easyiest way to copy all my files?

Answer 1

Burn them to disk.

Answer 2

the easiest option, if you are upgrading and buying a new computer is to buy a new hard drive or sell the old system without a hard drive. install your old drive in your new computer. and install the new drive in the old computer.
that has to be the fastest and easiest way to copy files over. besides which you do not have the risk of anyone recovering any personal sensitive data such as banking information (relatively easy to do with the right software).
the above is the easiest and safest way to save all your files.

however there are other options.
you can burn your data to DVD or CD (if you have a burner in your computer and the right software).
you can use an external hard drive and then drag and drop the files over to the drive.
network two computers together and transfer the files to a shared folder or drive.
you could rent space on an FTP server (host) and upload the files to that remote host.

Personally if it were me for security as i have used a computer for banking and shopping online, I would buy a new hard drive (under £70 for 250GB approximately) and fit that in the computer i was selling and keeping the old drive as a back up. and may be buy an external case for it to make connecting the drive easy when required.

a disk drive swap (providing you have the drives to hand) will take no more than five minutes to swap each one.
Though the two systems will need to have the operating systems set up again depending on computer speed this can take anything from half an hour upwards.

to burn to DVD or CD would take a coule of days for 200+ GB of data to a series of DVDs again depending on the speed of the burner.
copy to an external drive would take a few minutes to several hours depending on how much data you need to transfer.

good luck.
If your data is irreplacable in my experiance a seagate drive out lives a western digital five to one (i had a western digital drive last six months, a seagate has lasted so far (and still going strong) 2.5 years so far. on the curent systems and i have family members with seagates that have lasted for near ten years now. though to be safe make TWO copies (sounds like i'm being patronising here, but i learnt the hard way after a mirror image i made with a backup software program got corrupted and was unrecoverable i lost a lot of data. now i do an archive (compressed image back up) and standard mirror (like for like uncompressed) copy.

Answer 3

Hi my answer is to buy another hard drive ideally slightly larger than the hard drive is going to be on your new pc ie if your new PC has a 200gig hard drive buy a 250gig hard drive. The reason for buying a larger hard drive is so you can secognize which is which at a later stage. Then copy everything from your old PCs h/ drive onto your newly bought drive and when you get your new PC just copy what you need from your newly bought drive onto the drive in your PC. Then on the old PC delete all the files leaving only the operating system and the job is done and you have a proper back of your hard drive. BUT DO NOT keep it in side your new PC as if you have a fire you have lost everything. Leave it with a friend you can trust or your parents if they are local etc etc. and after a couple of months wire up your back up hard drive so you have the two connected to your computer then copy from the drive in your PC [the smaller one] to your backup drive remove back up drive to safe place again and when you have added what you think is a lot of data back it up again. for this backing up I use Norton Ghost on a floppy but it is available on cd now. Buy a Hitachi hard drive and not a cheap unbranded one or a refurbished one. Of course if your data will fit onto a DVD or two you could do it that way but you will not have a super back up like the system I have described. . Note you have to open your PC to connect your sata [flat] cable from hard drive to mother board next to your existing drive connection .You will also ,need to connect one of the power cables that exit the PSU there is usually a spare or two brown flat connectors in this bundle TIP try not to undo the bundle but genyly ease one free enough for your needs. You will need to buy a sata cable ,5 metre is normaly ok and mabe an adaptor to conect a molex to your hard drive. This may sound difficult but it is not ,if however you do not fancy poking about in side you pc or you have a purchase agreement with the firm that you purchased it from use an external hard drive in a case which is connected by a usb cable. I hope that this is of some help to you and good luck TOM.

Answer 4

The easiest way is to create an image of your hard drive and save it on to an external hard drive. The image is an exact copy of the orginial hard drive, preserving all your data files and operating system files. You can try Acronis True Image or Symantec Ghost.

1. Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/)

2. Symantec Ghost (http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10)

Acronis True Image Description
Acronis True Image 10 Home

Backing up is easy to do!

Acronis True Image 10 Home creates the exact copy of your hard disk and allows you to instantly restore the entire machine including operating system, applications, and all the data in the event of a fatal system crash or virus attack — no reinstallations required!

With the new version you also can easily back up your music, video, and digital photos, as well as Outlook e-mails, contacts, calendar, tasks, and user settings with just a few mouse clicks!

Copy your entire PC, including the operating system, applications, user settings, and all data using our patented disk imaging technology.
Backup your music, video, and digital photos!
Backup your Outlook e-mails, contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, signatures, news folders, e-mail rules and user settings with just a few mouse clicks!
Restore all the settings for Microsoft Office, iTunes, Windows Media Player and dozens of popular applications!

Answer 5

Get an external USB drive, the size of which depends on the amount of data you want to copy - copy your data across to the USB drive and remember to delete the old files on your PC before you pass it on!

Answer 6

If you have several GB of files, then copying them over a network would be the easiest way. If you don't have too many, then a USB drive would be the easiest.

Answer 7

Cheapest and Easiest is to Use XXCOPY
This will copy all files to the destination of Your Choice

Answer 8

Invest in a portable hardrive - such as the Western Digital My Book - you can pick them up quite cheaply now. Saves having loads of burned discs every time you want to kepp something

Answer 9

You have a number of ways.
1. Copy them to a cd or dvd
2. buy a external hd, and copy them to that
3. Use a second ide hard drive and copy them to that
4. take out your original hd keep it and replace it with
another one

Answer 10

The EASIEST way is to take the hard drive out and keep it. Add it to your new computer as a 2nd drive.
Or use and hard drive backup program available online.

Answer 11

Digi Camera.