Zip Drive and XP

[OnionPatch]

I have a new computer. It has a CD drive (and burner) but no floppy drive. My old computer has a floppy but no CD burner. There are thousands of pictures on my old computer that I need to move to the new one somehow because I'm giving the old one away.

My friend let me borrow her ZIP drive. I started to read the intallation instructions last night and noticed it did not mention Windows XP, which is what my new computer runs on.

So, I know I can get the ZIP drive working on the old one (Windows98) and copy the pictures to the ZIP drive, but will I be able to attach the ZIP drive to my new computer that uses XP? I don't want to go to the trouble to hook it up to the old computer if I can't get it to work on the new one.

Any other solutions for my transfer problem? I want to give my old computer away to a cool, young guy who is newly political and has NO computer at all! (I'll be adding some sites to the "favorites" before I give it to him, like DU and Buzzflash!)

[Jersey Devil]

1. Zip drive works fine with xp

I have an Iomega Zip drive. With xp you don't even need the Iomega software to install the drive. But if you have "thousands" of photos you will drive yourself crazy installing them onto zip disks for transfer and moving the zip drive back and forth from one computer to the other.

Probably the best way to move your files is to borrow a USB flash drive, copy the pics to the flash drive, plug it into your new computer and load them that way, fast and easy.

Or you could take the hard drive out of the old computer and install it on your new computer temporarily as a "slave" drive, then just copy and paste the photos to your new drive, remove the hard drive and put it back in your old computer.

[OnionPatch]

2. Is that hard to do?

Installing it as a slave drive on the new one? Also, the old computer has a lot of spyware and stuff on it that I couldn't get rid of. Will it affect anything on my new computer if I hook them together? Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I'm not very technical. Thanks for the help.

[Jersey Devil]

3. Actually the flash drive is a better idea

I think you can get a flash drive these days for about $50 with about 512MB of memory. Check them out at http://www.cnet.com

If you do a lot of photgraphy a flash drive would be very handy to move photos from machine to machine, distribute them to your friends, etc.

As for installing the old drive as a slave drive if you are not familiar with installing drives then I would not recommend it for you.

[2Design]

4. zip works fine with xp and with my windows ME

with the zip - you can sort through your pictures
with a jump drive - it might hold more
I still use zips - 250 because I only have 64 jump
I take my zip drive with me places and can then copy from other machines if needed and bring back to mine

[BlueHandDuo]

5. I tried to install my ZIP drive on the ME computer...

...and the driver installation program told me the drivers already existed on that machine. Yet when I plugged the drive in, it wasn't recognized.

Still works great on the Win98 laptop, but do you have any idea what I can do to get it working under ME?