Computer question

[Bill Howell]

I got a new Mac Book Pro yesterday. I am sure I have the info somewhere but computer talk is pretty much Greek to me and I just don't follow along very well. I need to transfer my pictures from my PC to the Mac. What is the best way to do this? Download them to a disk?

Still learning at 52....

[DocJr]

How much space is being used? a typical cd can hold 700mb of pics. I'm a picture junkie, I have gigs and gigs of pictures. I would buy an 8 gig thumb/zip/flash drive. (Whatever you wanna call it). You could store the pics on that little thing, or transfer, it's up to you.

http://www.google.com/products/catal...CAcQ8wIwADgA#p

[DocJr]

That description mentions pc though...why wouldn't it work for a mac? hmm

[ArtosDracon]

Thumb drives are still almost exclusively an old file system intentionally so that they have good cross compatibility with Mac, PC and Linux.

[Bill Howell]

Great! Thanks guys, I will go to wally world or Staples and get one and try it.

[GeoffP]

Bill,

Any thumb drive will work. The bigger, the better. It'll make the transfer easier. One suggestion, please don't store your pics on a thumb drive. I have seen far too many fail with important data on them at work. They're next to impossible to recover. They are great for a backup storage solution though.

BTW, you'll love the MacBook Pro. I've used one for both Windows and Mac stuff for 3-4 years. I've got Windows 7 and Snow Leopard on mine. Enjoy!!

[ArtosDracon]

I had assumed that it would just be used to transfer them, and possible store a backup of the current state. They are definitely not an every day use type of item, they are just portable quick storage.

[TERMN8OR]

USB Thumb drive is the way to go.

[zbugger]

Bill, my sister is a Mac freak. If you still have her number you can give her a call. She'll help you out.

[724tim]

PC transfer cable.
http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-Data-Link-Fi...efaultDomain_0

[DocJr]

I don't wanna start anything, I just wanna pic a few brains, that's all. But I'm all the time hearing horror stories about failure. (Now watch, I'll jinx myself...

I have 3 flash drives that I used all the time, maybe not daily, but close to it, and I've had them 2 years so far, and so far, so good. I just bought a 500GB external hard drive (Also to which I always hear horror stories about), and lastly my trust ole laptop with a gig of space. My question is this really...How can I just use my flash drives and external hard drives as backups only, when my laptop only has a gig? it defies the point.

People always say, back up back up back up, so if I have 8 gigs of pictures, I really need 24? lol Man, I'll go broke just backing up.

Now this is my pseudo argument (Because I really do understand the concept of backing up your files). But I would think most failure comes from the user, and how they take care of their items. Why would a company make a 500GB hard drive just to have it fail? Maybe they're not intended for the average person, but it's going to take me a while to fill it up, I'm hoping it lasts a while. Should I buy 2 extra 500 GB hard drives?? wow. I'm wasting money! LOL

[67l35]

If you have a home network you can use a transfer agent such as ftp, sftp, or scp to move the files across the network. It's pretty straight forward and doesn't cost anything if you already have a network. If you don't have a network you can use a cross-over cable between the two devices to accomplish the same thing. Like others have said thumb drives will work if you have one or don't have a ton of data to move.

DocJr.
Hard drives can fail for a lot of reasons just like anything with moving parts. Static, heat, vibration, and dust/dirt/contamination are the most frequent culprits. Thumb drives tend to be a little more reliable since they don't have a motor or moving parts to fail. Problem is they're small and prone to static and physical damage.

If you want a reliable backup device, buy a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device with RAID capabilities. Plug it into your network and either use a software backup utility or manually copy your data up to the NAS. RAID will allow your data to survive a disk failure. Even if 1 drive fails you will still be able to read/write/access your data. Another benefit of a NAS is you can access the data on it from any machine on your network.

http://www.acsdata.com/raid-basics.htm

[ArtosDracon]

Talking about backing up is going to end up bringing up all sorts of options like Raid 5 or 6 and they combinations of raid arrays to get things like Raid 50. I have a raid 5 array at home, I use it to store all of my movies so I can call them up instantly, no fooling with disks, but most people are never going to need it. One true back-up copy of anything is good enough for most people.