File transfer advice

[ers1121]

I am assembling a new system for my wife, and need some advice to transfer my files from my old HD to the new ones. The new system has two sata HD's, I have about 6GB's of photos to transfers to the new system.
My question is this; should I transfer them to my laptop & then to the new system when it is up & running. Or could I set the old HD as a slave & plug in the the IDE cable & copy them direct to the new drives.
The new MB is the Intel DG33TL with two Hitachi 320GB hd's set up as a raid 1 setup. I remember reading somewhere on here that you couldn't use True Image to copy an IDE drive to a SATA one.
I have enough room to copy them to the laptop but unsure as to which is the easier way to go. Any advise appricated.
Ed

[Midknyte]

if you are just copying data, you wouldn't need to use trueimage anyway. slaving the old hard drive would probably be the quickest way.

is there a reason you can't network the two systems? i don't see why you would transfer to a laptop and then to a desktop. if that's an option, you must have a network, right?

maybe you should invest in an external usb hard drive for backups. then you could easily move files from one system to another RAID1 doesn't mean your data is secure. what if you delete a file or get a virus?

[ers1121]

Thanks for thre reply & moving this to the right forum. The computer I am replacing & the laptop are networked. The problem is that I am using the same case so the old HD won't be installed in anything. I was just going move the data files to the laptop until the other system was running. But I wasn't positive plugging into the IDE was going to work. As for the raid setup it's just in case of a HD failure. I know it's not foolproof but.....

[Midknyte]

I see. So you're rebuilding a system, not making a new one.

you could still slave the drive on the new MB. i don't see why you need to move the data to a laptop first. it's not like you're reformatting the IDE drive.

[Sterling_Aug]

I would spend $20 for an external USB drive storage case and use the old drive as a protable file transfer or backup drive for all the machines. No reason to mount it permanently in a desktop system when the laptop could use it as well.

[ers1121]

I thought about that too, so I stopped on the way home and got one. But ran into other problems installing the new MB. Will post new problem in tech support. Thanks for the advice.
Ed

[ers1121]

OK, now that the wife's system is done and running smoothly I have one last question about doing my own laptop. I am going to replace the 30gig HDD with something much larger, would I be able to buy the new drive, install it in a 2.5" external housing, and use either True Image or Ghost to clone the the new drive in the external housing and just install it in the laptop?

[Sterling_Aug]

Yes, but I would do it a little differently so you do not screw the clone up.

Move the old drive to the external enclosure and install the new drive in the laptop.

Then you only have to mount the new drive once and the old drive will already be in the enclosure so you can format it and use it as a backup drive after you verify the cloned drive works and boots properly.

[ers1121]

Sound like a better idea to me. As alway thanks for the help, you are the best.