Amoeba

Okay, if you dont have a wireless network, and dont have those serial to serial ports to connect the computers to each other, what else can you do to transfer files? I have a usb 1gb drive but im guessing when i try to transfer the stuff over from windows 98 to windows xp there will be FAT problems or whatever its called.

mt6forlife

USB drives come formatted FAT32. Win98 and XP can both read/write it so that's not an issue. If you have a lot of data, pull the hard disk out of the old machine and connect it to an IDE cable inside the new one.

Amoeba

wait so with the 1gb sandisk mini cruzer 1.0gb usb flash drive which was already used in a windows xp computer first, i can plug it in the windows xp, install the drivers and the files will show up? and i can then transfer files onto the usb flash drive and over to xp with no problem?

Also i have a serial to serial cable, both 9 pin that looks 10 years old, is this capable of transferring with the windows transfer utility or is there a special serial to serial cable that transfers files.

Amoeba

BTW: i cant find a windows 98 driver for this damn usb flash drive

mt6forlife

Don't bother with a serial cable. Your new computer will be obsolete before you get all of your files into it.

A thumb drive is like any other mass storage device. Its formatted with the file system of your choice, the default being FAT32 since just about anything can read/write it. WinXP doesn't need drivers for a thumb drive. Just plug it in and within a minute, it'll appear in My Computer. Win98 cannot handle mass storage USB devices on it own. You'll need to downlad a Win98 driver from Sandisk. I have a couple of thumb drives, a 1GB Lexar and a 256MB Sandisk and both had Win98 drivers on their web sites.

Your old Win98 machine only has USB1.1 ports which will limit your transfer rate to about the same as a 4x CD-ROM. For any sizeable amount of data, the easiest method by far is to pull the drive and connect it to the new machine.

Amoeba

its gonna only be about 100 megs maybe.....now heres the question, the 1.0gb usb thumb drive has already been used by my brother on his windows xp machine....when i put this in the windows98 and install the drivers, will i be able to see his files that are on there from xp, and can i transfer my files from windows 98 onto the thumb drive, then put the thumb drive in the windows xp system and transfer the windows 98 files over with no problem?

mt6forlife

You could pass it around between a Win98, ME, 2000, XP, Linux, MacOS9, MacOS10 and its going to look exactly the same in each computer. The OS of the host computer has nothing to do with it. The files on the thumb drive are on the thumb drive, no matter who put them there.