You are here Software Advice and Support > How-to Guides > Transfer Data between PCs on the College Network

Windows - Data transfer between PCs on the College network

There are several cases when you might find it useful to transfer data from one computer to another over the College network. For example, when switching to a new computer most users will have files and folders that they want to transfer from the old computer. Alternatively you may simply want to transfer a large amount of data from one computer to another, without the hassle of using removable media such as CDs or USB memory keys.

Outlined below are instructions on how to transfer data between Windows PCs which are connected to the College network.

Requirements and Preparing for Data Transfer

1. At the time of data transfer, both Windows PCs (source and destination) will have to be switched on and connected to the College network i.e. this form of data transfer will only work if each computers has its own physical network connection.
2. Your College username must be a member of the local administrator group on both computers and you must be logged in to the destination computer with this username.
3. You will need to know the computer name of the source computer, the computer with the data already on it. The computer name will usually be in the form ABC123123
4. You will need to know where the files and folders you wish to transfer are located on the source computer. A good tip is to first copy all the data to be transferred into a new folder on the C: drive or D: drive of the source computer.
5. You can then share out this folder - right-click on it and choose Share with - Specific people
6. Add the username(s) of the people you wish to share the folder with: Type in the username, click Add and repeat for all usernames that will need access to this folder (most likely just your own username if you are transferring data from your old PC to a new PC). Then click Share.

Transferring the Data

Once you are happy that you have met the above criteria follow these steps to transfer the data:

1. Login to the destination computer
2. On Windows 8 and Windows 10 click the Start button and type in the information in step 3 below
3. Enter, all in lower case, two backslashes \\ followed by the computer name of source computer. For example, if the computer name was ABC123123 you would enter: \\abc123123
4. Click OK. If you are prompted for a username and password this means you have not followed step 2 in the requirements above. Please ensure your username is part of the local administrators group on both computers.
5. A window should open giving you access to the appropriate drive on the source computer. You can now copy and paste any data that you wish to transfer to the destination computer. Please be aware that this may take some time depending on the amount of data to be transferred.