Switch Journal: Transferring Files

March 17, 2007, 2:54 PM | 2 Comments

One of the most important things that you’ll need to do when you switch to a new computer—regardless of platform—is get your old files onto your new machine. While this is getting increasingly easier to do when transferring files between “like minded” computers, what do you do when you need to transfer files off your old Windows PC to your new Mac?

Fortunately, this task is actually fairly simple; so we’ll get right down to it. For the purposes of this article, I’ll be transferring files from a Windows XP Home machine onto a Mac running OS X Tiger (10.4.7 or newer) but it’s really not that much different if you’re using older (or newer) operating systems.

Step 1: Make sure your computers are connected to the same network

This may seem obvious, but I thought I’d cover it just in case. For my setup I just plugged both of my computers into my router (or had them both connected to my wireless network). As far as I know though, you should be able to accomplish the same thing with as little as a crossover cable going directly between the 2 computers, or over a full scale corporate network (depending on how it’s configured of course).

Step 2: Create a Shared Folder on your Windows XP machine

To make life easier, you may want to put all the files you’d like to transfer into a separate folder on your Windows machine. You could just share the entire hard drive, but this isn’t really recommended. For my purposes, I created a folder on my hard drive called “Shared” but you can create a folder and name it whatever you want. Just be sure to use a name that’s easy to remember.

Once you know which folder you’d like to share, right click on the folder and select the “Sharing and Security…” item. A properties dialogue will appear with the Sharing tab selected (if it’s not selected, click on it to view the sharing options for your selected folder).

Note: If you’ve never enabled it before, you’ll need to enable network file sharing for Windows. There should be a link in the “Network sharing and security” group to enable file sharing, and you don’t need to bother using the wizard as there should be an option titled “just enable file sharing” after you’ve clicked on the link.

If file sharing is enabled (or once it is enabled) you’ll see an option group titled “Network sharing and security.” In the Network sharing and security group, check the “Share this folder on the network” checkbox and enter a “Share name.” The share name will be used later, so make sure it’s something that you can easily remember. Once you’ve entered the share name, click OK and your folder will now be setup for sharing files over your network. Windows will now show the folder with a different icon than before (by default it’s a folder icon with a hand underneath it).

Step 3: Determine your Windows machine’s IP Address

In order to connect to your PC from your Mac, you’ll need to know the current IP address of your Windows computer. There are a number of ways that you can find this address, but the easiest way is to open your computer’s Network Connections from the Control Panel by clicking Start > Control Panel > Network Connections (or if your control panel is set to the Windows XP “Category View,” go to: Start > Control Panel > Network & Internet Connections > Network Connections).

Once you’ve opened your network connections you should see at least one connection available. If one is currently connected to the network it should be indicated by a green connection icon (if the network connection is not connected, you’ll see a red X on the icon.

Note: If you’re running any third-party firewall software, you may want to disable it while you’re transferring files between your 2 computers. The default Windows XP firewall should allow the 2 computers to connect just fine, but I have had connection trouble at times when running third-party firewalls.

Once you’ve determined which Network Connection you’ll be using, right click on it and select the Status item from the menu. The Status dialogue should contain at least 2 tabs at the top. Select the “Support” tab.

Under the Support tab there will be a group called “Connection status” that will list a few different items, including Address Type, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway and your current IP Address. For what we’re trying to accomplish, none of the other items are really all that important, so don’t worry about them too much. Locate the IP Address and write it down, we’ll need that address to connect to the Windows machine from your Mac.

Step 4: Connect to your PC’s shared folder from your Mac

This is where the really easy part comes into play. From the Finder, click on the “Go” menu and select the “Connect to Server…” item. Alternatively, you can use your keyboard and press Command (the Apple key) + K to open the Connect to Server dialogue.

The Connect to Server dialogue is fairly simple, all you need to do is enter the address of the “server” you want to connect to. To connect to your Windows machine, enter “smb://IPADDRESS” in the “Server Address” text box. Because we’re connecting to a Windows machine, Macs have to use what’s called the “Samba” protocol, that’s what the “smb://” part stands for. Enter the IP Address we got in Step 3 and click the “Connect” button. For our example, the server address would be: smb://10.0.1.200.

Depending on the configuration of your Windows machine, your Mac may ask you for a username and password to connect to the Windows machine. Any valid Windows XP user/password combo should work. Leave the default value of the “Workgroup or Domain” text box the way it is and enter a username and password into the appropriate text boxes. Optionally, you can store this information in your Keychain so that you won’t have to enter it every time you want to connect to your shared folder.

If your username and password were successful, OS X will now ask you to select the SMB/CIFS volume to connect to. There should be a dropdown box there that lists all of the shared volumes (or folders) that are available on your Windows machine. Select the volume name that you entered as the Share name (not the actual folder name on the Windows hard drive – remember, the Folder name and the Share name don’t have to be the same) in step 2 above.

Clicking the OK button will then cause OS X to “Mount” the shared volume to your Mac, allowing you to copy the files and folders that are inside your shared volume. Finder should automatically open the shared volume, but if it doesn’t you should be able to find the volume on your desktop where you can then double-click the volume to open it. Once you’re finished with your shared volume you can eject it (or disconnect it) from your Mac by dragging the icon from your desktop down to the trashcan in your Dock.

That’s really all there is to it. There are a lot of steps, but they’re all fairly simple. If you’d like to go the other way around (i.e., put files from your Mac onto your Windows PC) just follow the above steps but be sure to check off the “Allow network users to change my files” checkbox when creating your shared folder. See the illustration in Step 2 above; the checkbox will be directly below the “Share name” text box.

For those of you following my “Switch Journal” regularly, I apologize for the lack of updates over the past couple of months. I’ve been really busy lately and haven’t had time to write up all of the examples that I have in mind. As you can imagine, because of all the screenshots and illustrations, it does take a while to write these articles and even though I’ve been meaning to write this particular article since I got my Mac back in December, it just hasn’t happened yet. Stay tuned though; I’ve got quite a few more ideas for the Switch Journal that should be coming down the pipeline soon.

As always, any questions, comments or suggestions for future Switch Journal articles can be posted in the comments section.

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