Thinkpads Forum

I have 50 gigs of information to transfer from my desktop computer to my new laptop drive. The desktop has USB 1, so removable media would take too much time. Both computers have internet access.
Any suggestions?

Ethernet crossover cable would be faster if you have gigabit nic on the desktop, t42 comes with gigaabit nic.

Yep, crossover cable if you have one, even if you only do it at 100mbps it's probably faster than the alternatives. If the two are connected via a switch, you can do it that way as well, at the same speeds.

Im not too knowledegable with networks. Is there something I could read to get a better understanding on doing a cross over

Let me splain because i'll try to simplify.

Actually you just need a regular ethernet cable preferably cat5e or cat6 (if your desktop can do gigabit speeds) because i forgot the t42's nic will autosense what it needs to do to transfer data. Plug the ethernet cable into the desktop's nic and the t42's nic, you could let windows configure the ip address for you or just open network connections, right click on the LAN connection select tcp/ip select properties a box will open, select "use the following IP address"
and input 10.10.10.2 (this is just one I made up but it will work) the subnet mask will autoconfigure. On the other machine use 10.10.10.3. Close out of that. Make sure they are both in the same workgroup, right click on my computer select computer name and look in the workgroup, if the are the same on both you are good if not change one to match the other. Enable file sharing on the folders with the data in it that you want to move by right clicking the folder and select sharing be sure to select "just enable file sharing" when you close out there should be a little hand under that folder. It may be easier to share out the whole C drive. On the destination computer open network places and select view workgroup computers and click on the icon of the computer when it pops up, the shared folders should appear and you can copy them. Be sure to turn off your firewall if it is on.

When you finish reverse these steps, disable the sharing, set your nics back to DHCP or "obtain ip address automatically" and turn your firewall back on, change the workgroup to the previous.

This will take some time so be patient, that is a lot of data, i have a firewire pcmcia and it works great.

^ thanks for information.

After a little tweaking here and there I was able to directly connect the two computers and the files are being transfered as we speak