My old (circa 1997) computer is experiencing some fairly consistent problems resulting in several crashes each day. There are a large number of irreplaceable files on the computer which we need to urgently transfer to another computer. What is the best and easiest method of moving files between computers? Alternatively, would it be advisable to take the computer to a professional for this task? The computer is running Windows 95 and the computer to which the files are being moved is running Windows XP.

From your description it certainly sounds like it is time to decommission your old computer, since it is technically old and running a version of Windows (i.e. Windows 95) which has been superseded several times and unsupported for many years. It is quite dangerous to continue to run old versions of Windows which are no longer supported as Microsoft no longer release any updates (particularly, security updates) for such old operating systems, meaning that if a new security vulnerability is discovered in those old operating systems, no patch or update will be made available to address the issue leaving you vulnerable to attack. Since the computer is so old it probably would not support the newer versions of Windows and thus the best course of action is to transfer the data from that old computer onto a newer computer, as you have suggested.

Depending on the capabilities of your old computer, it could be a relatively easy task to transfer the data between the old and new machines. If your old computer has USB ports then by far the easiest method to transfer data between computers is using an external USB hard drive. These are relatively inexpensive, when considering the benefits which they can provide, as you can purchase an external USB hard drive with between 500 GB – 1 TB of capacity for around $150. I doubt that the hard drive within your old computer has anywhere near this capacity, meaning that obtaining an external USB hard drive with such a large capacity should provide ample space for the data that you wish to transfer between computers. The advantage of such drives is that you can connect the hard drive to your computer via a USB port and then it will be detected on the computer as a standard drive (much like a USB thumb drive or CD which has been inserted into the CD drive). You can then copy files and folders onto the external drive just like any other drive. Once you are done, eject the drive from the old computer (by right-clicking on the drive in My Computer and select “Eject”) and then connect the USB drive to your new computer and copy the data onto the hard drive of the new computer. Additionally, once the data transfer process has completed, you can use the external hard drive as a backup device. Since you mentioned that the data on the computer is irreplaceable, it is essential that you have a backup of the data in case of a hard drive or other hardware failure. An external hard drive is, again, one of the most convenient methods to keep a backup of your data.

However, all of the discussion above about external USB hard drives assumes that your old computer has USB ports. Given the age of the machine it is possible that it does not have USB since this standard only became widespread around 1997 – 98 so your computer may have missed the opportunity to have USB on-board. That said, it is possible that you upgraded the computer thereafter to get USB capabilities included and thus could use the external USB hard drive method discussed previously. On the other hand, if the computer does not have USB ports then we need to consider alternative methods of transferring data between the computers. The next most obvious alternative is to copy the data to CDs. If your old computer has a CD writer then you could copy the data that you wish to transfer to CD and then load that CD into the new computer and copy that data off onto the hard drive of the new computer. This is more inconvenient and time consuming because if you have more than 700 MB (or 650 MB) of data then you will need to split the data that you wish to transfer across several CDs (as the capacity of one CD-R is 700MB (or 650 MB, depending on whether you purchase the higher or lower capacity CD-Rs – most likely you would purchase the higher-capacity 700MB CD-Rs since they are much more widespread than the lower-capacity variant). That said, if you are only transferring documents then you may find the data that you wish to transfer is quite small and could fit on a few CD-R discs making this process a viable alternative.

Again, the above procedure assumes that your computer has a CD writer. In the event that it does not then things become more difficult since the lack of USB and a CD writer means there is no particularly convenient and easy method to transfer a large amount of data off the old computer. In this case the best solution would be to take the computer to a professional for the data transfer. This should not be a particularly difficult task, since they would be able to take the hard drive out of the old computer and then connect this into another computer to ease the data transfer process. I would suggest that you purchase a USB external hard drive and then take the old computer plus the external drive to the computer repairer and ask them to transfer all data (i.e. mirror) the hard drive on the old computer onto the external USB hard drive. This means that the external USB hard drive should have a duplicate of the data contained on the hard drive inside the old computer. You can then connect the USB hard drive to your new computer and pick and choose the data that you wish to transfer across. Transferring all the data requires no more effort than selectively transferring particular data and it also eliminates the inevitable risk of specifically instructing the repairer about the data you wish to have transferred, only to realise later that you forgot some of the important data you needed copied. Of course, once the transfer has been completed ensure that you get the old computer (and hard drive) back from the repairer and I would recommend that you do not dispose of that computer, but instead put it away somewhere safe (since it can usefully serve as a second “master” backup of all that important, irreplaceable data which you need).