How to transfer old computer files (Linux Mint & Windows 7) to new Windows 8.1 computer

usb thumb drive
or
dvd's
or
ethernet cable

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.

To elaborate on the last option i.e. ethernet here is a tutorial for sharing files between windows 7 and 8.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...&v4h=winxptab1

The easiest linux method would to use the nautlius file browser once you have file sharing working between windows. You can browse the network and see shares and copy files by just drag and drop.

or
floppy disc

a win8 tablet will not have a 3.5 in floppy drive
nor would the windows7 computer

and the current linux kernel dose not even look for a Mac floppy anymore

and at 1.44 meg per disk ...........

USB floppy drive FTW

i am not even going to calculate the number of 3.5 in floppies and time it would take to transfer just one of my drives a 4 TB WD drive

Approximately 2.9 million disks assuming the drive was full, which would be bad practise.

Thank you for your response, everyone. Now here's the thing. I am pretty much computer illiterate & have not done this before. I assume (excuse my ignorance) I set up new computer & attach it to old computer with USB cable? Do I (Say) go to windows 7 first & transfer info from there & then to Linux mint for those files? I have to start with this 'cause I can only do one step at a time.

You can not use a standard USB cable. There are USB data transfer like the URL below that will work with windows. I do not know which cables anymore have linux support (depends on chipset).

http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Transfe.../dp/B0093HCIQ0

Windows does have an application called "Easy Transfer" that will transfer your email, documents, music etc but not programs. You can use either an external drive or via network.

It is not very difficult to setup networking with either OS.

Socrates2,

The absolute easiest thing to do would be to just get a USB stick. They are available just about everywhere -- here is a link to an online source, but you can get them in Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc.: USB Flash Drives.

Boot into the old computer, plug in the USB drive, then just use your mouse to copy/paste things from the file system to the USB. Take it out and put it in the new computer and copy/paste from the USB to where you want the files in the new computer. It may take a while doing it that way, depending on how many things you're transferring, but you don't need to try networking the computers together if that's too hard for you to do.

Hi there

If the old computer is a laptop you can simply remove the drive and use a SATA USB2 cable to connect the HDD to a new computers USB port.

Otherwise really simple way - in Windows networking just share the files and copy via File explorer and from Linuxmint share data via SAMBA and copy to new machine.

Your main problem is if you are only running Windows on the new machine is to get the Linux files. SAMBA does that without any problem -- on Linux mint easy gui to set up samba -- INSTALL SYSTEM-CONFIG-SAMBA.

Cheers

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Just put a the hard drive you want to use for 8.1 into an enclosure like this one.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...&Sku=U12-42068

Using Mint and qparted, make a partition big enough to hold all of your data, but not hog up your entire hard drive. Format this partition as NTFS. Preferably, put it at the end of the drive.

When you install 8.1, make sure that you do NOT use up the whole drive. Install Windows onto the unpartitioned part of the drive only.

Alternative:

Using Linux Mint, shrink your partition on your Mint system and make a new FAT or NTFS partition big enough to hold your data using gparted. Copy and paste your data using dolphin to the new partition.

Install 8.1 on your new blank hard drive or new computer.

Put the Mint drive into the enclosure and move your data. Windows will NOT be able to read the linux partition, but will read the FAT or NTFS partition with your data on it just fine.