All of these involve transferring files between two computers—and fortunately, there are several ways to do this.  We’ll take a look at some of the most common and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Floppy disks.  The very words will doubtlessly date anyone who uses them, but as many of you will no doubt remember, a floppy disk (so named because of the bendable quality of the original product) used to be the one and only way to copy a file from one computer to the other.  Today both the disks themselves and the drives to use them within a computer are becoming ever scarcer . . . but if you have a disk and two computers that both have floppy drives, you can still use this method.  You will, however, want to be careful of issues with both reliability (floppy disks tend to fail at a higher rate than other storage media) and size (the maximum amount you can store on a single disk is approximately 1.4 megabytes of data, which with today’s ever-larger data files won’t get you very far).

And before we go on, a quick note about bytes, megabytes, and gigabytes for those not familiar with the terminology.  The smallest piece of information that can be stored on a computer is referred to as a “bit.”  A bit contains a single character which can be either 0 or 1 (just like in the binary numbering system), and your computer performs logical calculations based on whether particular bits have the 0 or the 1 stored.  Eight bits of data comprise a byte; 1,024 bytes of data comprise a kilobyte; 1,024 kilobytes comprise a megabyte; and 1,024 megabytes comprise a gigabyte.  So you can see that 1.4 megabytes really doesn’t hold a lot of your data—and using floppy disks may be a transfer method that is more limited to your smaller files.

Writable CDs.  More and more computers these days are coming to you with CD/DVD drives that have the ability to write CDs and/or DVDs (you may commonly hear this referred to as “burning” a CD or DVD).  If your computer has one of these drives, you can use the software that comes with the drive (it will usually be installed on your computer when you buy it) to select particular files and/or folders from your computer’s hard drive and write a copy of them to a CD or DVD.  Standard CDs will hold approximately 700 megabytes of data, while standard DVDs will hold approximately 4.7 gigabytes—making this a good option for large amounts of data.

However, it does have some disadvantages.  Many CD/DVD writing programs can be cumbersome and hard to use, especially for inexperienced users.  In addition, blank CDs or DVDs can occasionally be difficult to use when writing—write errors are not an uncommon sight when using CD writing software.  Finally, many blank CDs or DVDs (they will be labeled either “CD-R” or “DVD-R”) will only allow you to write to them one time and be unchangeable after that, rather than allowing you to write, rewrite, and delete such as other media.  (You can get CDs or DVDs that will allow rewriting—just look for ones labeled “CD-RW” or “DVD-RW.”)

USB drive.  This little gadget is one of the most useful technology updates to come along in quite some time.  It is a device that you plug into any one of your computer’s USB ports (that stands for Universal Serial Bus; the ports are the small rectangular slots approximately ½” long on the back—and sometimes the front—of your computer) and, once your computer recognizes it and installs the appropriate software, it will function as a separate hard drive on your computer.  You can copy files to it and transfer whatever data you want that’s within the size of the drive (we’ll discuss that more coming up), and when you’re finished, just unplug it from the USB port.  You can then take it to another computer, plug it into that computer’s USB port, and move the files onto that computer.

USB drives tend to be more reliable than other media and less prone to failures.  Most USB drives will hold anywhere from 64 megabytes to one gigabyte of data (making it more advantageous than some storage options and less than others).  However, there are also disadvantages; while they work quite well in computers that use the Windows XP operating system, they tend to work less well in computers with older versions of Windows (Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows 98 and/or Windows 95) unless you install the special software drivers that come with the USB drive.

File transfer cables.  Some of you may remember the days of connecting two computers with a serial or parallel cable, loading the right software on both computers, and transferring files across the cable.  Those days still exist to some degree, but with advances in technology the process is much more streamlined.  You can now get serial cables (or USB cables which work even faster) that connect between the computers and allow you to transfer data without loading or mastering any software programs  In a lot of ways, this is the easiest option—but it may also require the most technical knowledge and expertise.

Network the computers.  Using HunTel.net’s high speed Internet access via either DSL or cable modem, you can connect two computers to both the Internet and each other—and set them up to transfer data files.  Watch for our next Info Bytes article; we’ll discuss in detail how you can do exactly that.