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[Harry The Hipster]

Just ordered a new unit - am out of space on the present one, and its Win98 with unsupported drivers, etc. Here's my question - hope someone has helpful suggestions.

I have two drives in the present computer: C (13G), which has my OS, lots of miscellaneous program files and about 2000 music files, and D, which is a 40G dedicated music drive, now completely full.

My initial thought was to cannibalize the D and install it in the new unit as a D. That works OK. Question is, what do I do with the contents of the C, and how?

One possibility is AlohaBob, which has received some pretty good reviews, and can be enabled for selective data migration. Have any of you used it? Are there easier alternatives I'm missing?

Another question: is it better to attempt to move my existing copy of MJ to the new unit, and if so, what do I need to do to preserve settings and data that I've input to the various fields?

I'm a rookie when it comes to networking, so will need pretty basic input. Will be out of town when the new unit arrives, and don't have to grapple with this for about three weeks. Am grateful for any input users can give me.

Thanks....HTH

PS:  If I ever get it up and running, will have 240G storage, plus the D (if I move it), for a total of 280G.

[Gatobrit]

HTH - I'm assuming that the new computer is coming with a very large drive. In which case, move D to the new computer, move the contents to the new C drive then move D back to the old computer, copy everything from old C to D and then move D again - the Windows directory (probably) won't be useable but you are unlikely to want it anyway.

Seems the simplest / non-networking method.

[RemyJ]

240G?  As 2 120G drives?  Assuming so, and assuming you've got a CD installed as well, you'll probably have only 1 free IDE device and it's probably going to be a slave port.  Shuffling hard drives will probably mean having to mess with the jumpers on the drives when you move them back and forth.  If you're OK with that...

Put the old C drive in the new system and copy music and any other things you want to keep (mail, etc.) to the new C (don't copy the Windows or Program Files directories!!), the remove it.
The put the old D drive in the new system and rearrange at will across both old and new drives.  Leave the 40G installed in the new system as a scratch/tmp/swapfile drive.  There's no such thing as too much disk space.

AlohaBob looks like a good option to keep your MJ settings but I've never used it myself.  You can easily back up and transfer your MJ library manually but manually preserving your MJ settings would require registry manipulation. AlohaBob takes care of that for you.

If you want to go the AlohaBob route, you'll need an ethernet card in both systems and either a hub/switch or a crossover cable to connect the machines together.  Don't even think about using their parallel port or USB connectivity options to transfer your music:  way too slow.

What Operating System?  (W2K or XP, hopefully)

[AlonsoN]

What Gatobrit said.

If you can network the two machines, wireless or wired, so much the easier.

There is something to be said for keeping your OS and applications on a sep. physical drive from your data.  Things run faster, backups are easier, and it just is cleaner.

Don't try to copy any apps from one machine to the other.  Clean installs are your friend.

Data on the other hand you want to preserve by backing it up.  I'd create a folder on the existing machine, and in each application backup the data to a subfolder. MJ restores well.  Do the same with any install programs and updates and keys for any apps that you plan to use again.  

As to the options settings in MJ, it only takes a few minutes to set up a new install, and you will have the old one to refer to.

Another good idea is to use norton ghost to preserve nice clean go-back states.  For instance when you unpack the new machine clean up the OS, patch it, and Ghost it.  Then install and patch your main applications and Ghost it again.  That way when something goes south you can get back and running in a few minutes as opposed to all day.

Another good idea that you might consider since you are doing a move, is to place your music in a virtual drive, like M: That you can migrate it to any drive on any machine w/o problems.  And access it over the network.  Search here for discussions that have the word SUBST in them.

[KingSparta]

Buy A USB Drive And Just Copy And Transfer To The New Computer.

I Think That Would Be The Easyest Way.

Plus You Can Use It To Store More Files.

Since The 40 Gig Drive Has Files On It It Would Be Easy To Pop It In The New Computer As Long As The New Computer Can Handle Like 4 Drives

1. HD c:
2. CD D:
3. DVD E:

You Would Still Have Room For Drive F: And That 40gig Drive Could Be On The Second IDE Cable

[JimH]

HTH,
You're going to get as many ways to do this as there are posters here.

What I do now, each time I switch machines.

1.  Clean up the old drive by removing temp files and other garbage, and emptying the trash).

2.  Put both on the same network.  (We will help you if this seems daunting.)  You might need a hub to connect both.

3.  Copy the entire contents of the old machine to a new folder on the new machine, naming the folder "olddrive2002", for example.

4.  Then move things around on the new machine as needed.

The advantage to this is that you know you have everything you need.  And it's one simple copy operation.

[Harry|PLS|The|PLS|Hipster]

Thanks to all for a variety of suggestions. And yes, there'll be 2x120 Gig Western Digital 7200s, plus the old D, if I move it, which I think I will - there's an open bay. Still pondering what to do about the contents of the C Drive.

Any thoughts on what to do/not to do about MJ? Move? Reinstall?

HTH

Listening to: 'Barefoot Sunday Blues' from 'Organ-izing' by 'Mel Rhyne' on Media Jukebox

[Gatobrit]

HTH - definitely reinstall.