A friend needs to archive a lot of data on his machine, in order to start off again with a clean slate: i.e. fdisk – re-format-clean install-load only the software needed for current projects…..You get the drift. He doesn’t have a substantial means of backup (zip/DAT/Cdr etc.), and has no dosh to obtain said items, so I offered to help. I have a CDR/W, hence all my “stuff” is safely stored on a loverly shiny objects, and kept at some distance from my beloved (god, I worship her!) computer. Would the easiest way of helping him be: A. To transfer his data to my machine via serial port (have never connected 2 computers together before), and then burning it to CD (which means moving one of the dear things next to the other). Or B. Would it be quicker and easier (I think I’m quite capable of doing it) to stick my CDR/W drive in his machine for a while, and archiving his data to CDR from there. Thanks for reading this Phil

Howdy, Phil. Go with plan B, Yes you can use the serial port to transfer data be its slow and more of a pain to setup, atleast in my opinion. Since you know how to use your burner and its software is the reason I say, go with B. If you need any help on how to install the CD R/W in his system, just ask. Laters, Kevin The Tech Dude.

Thanks a lot Kevin (TTD), I'll go with that. I think I'll be O.K with the install. Just one question if you don't mind. Am I right in thinking, I set his CD ROM as a slave, and my CDR/W as the master, then let W95 (I believe he's on 95) do what it can on re-boot, then install the drivers as appropriate? Thanks again for the response Kevin.

Addition to above: I appreciate that I could just replace my friend's CD ROM with the R/W, but it would be handy to have both set up to verify that his CD ROM drive will read the burned disks. Cheers.

I would leave your friends cd-rom as the master and make yours the slave. I've heard it's better to make the slower device the slave.

Thanks JJ.