Transferring files from one laptop to another

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NewEdition

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I have a load of files I want to move from one laptop to another. Maybe 100GB or so.
It would be tedious doing this via usb sticks or even a portable hard drive.
Is there a way I can use a LAN cable to connect the two machines, maybe share a folder on the target machine to easily copy over (and back)?

I am not looking at the external drive solution at this stage, this is something I intend to do regularly, swapping movies from one machine to another, so direct cable connection is my preference if it is possible.

Thanks
 
I know you've decided the opposite, but I'd consider the portable hard drive option much less tedious than Ethernet (even gigabit Ethernet -- if you only have 100 Mb Ethernet it's a dead loss: you will be looking at several hours). Make sure you have USB 3, and it will go much faster than Ethernet, even allowing for the fact that you've to do two copies. Plus you only tie up one machine at a time. Whichever way you do it I'd recommend using something like Robocopy which can do a mirror image. Nothing worse than having to restart a huge failed copy from the beginning.
 
You could use Google drive. You get 15GB storage free with drive. Buy 100GB extra for €2 per month form Google. Transfer your files to Google drive then move them to your new machine. Cancel the extra storage once you have the files moved.
 
Google Drive limits your transfer speed, regardless of bandwidth from your ISP. Transferring 100 Gb would take dozens of hours. It also insists on zipping your files before a download which would probably take many hours on its own.
 
Assuming they're on the same LAN you can just share a folder on each laptop and copy over the domain or workgroup, but as dub_nerd said, don't do that, use a portable hd.
 
Let's be careful out there.

Unless both computers have USB3 connections to a USB3 drive you are wasting your money on USB3. In other words, a USB3/3.1 drive connected to a USB2 connector will have the performance of a USB2 drive.

In the real world, selecting files and folders and copying them to an external USB3 drive via a USB3 connection should transfer about 16Gbytes every 3/3.5 minutes, so say 25 minutes for the entire 100Gbytes - remember the raw speed is measured in Gigabits per second, the data values you want to transfer Gigabytes, eight times the size excluding indices etc.
 
Yes, definitely must be USB 3 all the way through to be effective. Most new laptops for the last several years have at least one USB 3 port. Make sure you use the right one (marked "SS" for superspeed). The LED activity indicator on many USB 3 drives will change colour to indicate USB 3 -- white or green for USB 2, royal blue for USB 3.

mathepac said:
...should transfer about 16Gbytes every 3/3.5 minutes, so say 25 minutes for the entire 100Gbytes
Click to expand...
At a bit over half a gigabit per second, that's probably a little pessimistic. Depends on the equipment, of course, but in my experience is also highly dependent on the files being copied. Huge numbers of small files takes a big hit from block allocation and directory updates, whereas the OP mentioned movies so should be much faster if we are talking about files that are several gigs a piece.
 
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dub_nerd said:
Google Drive limits your transfer speed, regardless of bandwidth from your ISP. Transferring 100 Gb would take dozens of hours. It also insists on zipping your files before a download which would probably take many hours on its own.
Click to expand...

Didn't have any issue with transferring about 15 GB. Took about 20 mins IIRC.
 
Use the router that supports your WIFI to share folders and copy. Connect the machines to the router if you have a couple of network cables as that will be faster.
 
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