Best way to large amounts of data between iMac and my PC (via WLAN)

Hello -

So, because of this thread, Unable to recognize USB flash drives (All), I backed up all the files which were on my old flash drive onto my roommate's iMac (this was because the iMac recognized the 32GB flash drive, and the PC I was previously using it on all of a sudden did not).

What I'm wanting to do, either by remote desktop, SFTP, or some other transfer protocol, is transfer the one folder with all of the data (about 18GB or so) from the iMac over the PC using the network.

What is the easiest way? I've enabled remote desktop on my Win7 machine, and I am able to remotely connect from the iMac to my PC using my private 192.168.x.x IP address. However, I'm not able to drag and drop the folder onto my desktop to initiate the transfer.

Can someone guide me into the right direction? Or, should I not even use remote desktop for this? Thanks.

18 gig transfer is going to take much longer than perhaps fixing why your pc doesnt recognize the flash drive.

All of the answers to your question are in the thread I linked to above.

Basically, the cliff notes are:

1. The USB drive was recognized in Disk Management, but Windows did not recognize a file system on it.
2. The USB could not be formatted because I receive an error when I tried to do so.
3. I deleted all USB flash memory entries in Device Management. This did not help my situation.
4. I checked the registry, and added the DWORD "NoAutoMount" and gave it a value of 0 to ensure all drives would auto mount with a letter. This did not fix my problem.
5. I rebooted my PC several times during this process.
6. My PC recognized other flash drives, but would not recognize one specific drive, while my roommate's iMac would.

So, all of the data is currently on the iMac. I need to get it over to my PC. Isn't there a transfer protocol to do this? If the network transferred ~ 300Mb/sec, I wouldn't see it taking more than 10 minutes to transfer?

Take a look at the official stance on transferring Mac data to Windows, here's a link:-

http://www.sigsoftware.com/info/mactowindows.pdf

Forgive me, but I do not know how to start SAMBA, or initiate a SFTP connection to my Win 7 machine using the iMac. I'm very un-Mac savvy.

BoostAddicted said:

Forgive me, but I do not know how to start SAMBA, or initiate a SFTP connection to my Win 7 machine using the iMac. I'm very un-Mac savvy.

The way I'm seeing it, you're asking a Win7 community to help you sort out how to, or why you're not able to, transfer files to a Win7 machine from a Mac database and file system - whether by USB stick, or over a network.

I tried to point you towards a source of information about why there are some differences, and therefore difficulties, and some explanation about what steps you may need to take to overcome the problems.

There's also specific software on the market to allow Mac files and file names to be read by Windows either 'on the fly' or after conversion - but as a non Mac user I hesitate to make any recommendation.

Whilst you may be lucky enough to find someone else with the patience and knowledge to walk you through what you want to do, it would have helped if you had initially made it clear that your data was either Mac files, or had been stored using a proprietary Mac file system.

Personally I think I would be looking up details in Mac user forums as there are probably many more people migrating to Win7 than there are migrating from Win7 to Mac OS/X

The thread I pointed above states the USB flash drive was used on my Win 7 PC. The only reason the files are on the Mac is because my PC, for some reason, would not recognize the flash drive any longer and the Mac would. So, the files are on the iMac, the flash drive formatted and returned, and now I need to get the files on my PC. The entirety of the files on the flash drive (now on the Mac) are Windows-based. The only way the Mac is involved is because it is the machine which recognized the flash drive and was capable of retrieving the data off of the possibly corrupt flash drive.

I realize this is a Windows 7 community...the obvious needn't be pointed out. If I am much better off just ravaging through Google and the Mac forums, I can do that. I figured with the extensive amount of guides for doing just about everything with a PC and Windows 7 that this issue would be somewhere here on Seven Forums.

I do appreciate your help, however. Macs are frustrating to me because I do not know them very well. I used them a lot in grade school, but don't remember very much. LoL, right now, I'm replying to this thread using remote desktop on the Mac to communicate through my PC. That's about as far as I got.

I may have found something which may help me and future searchers. I will post the answer if, in fact, I am able to transfer files.

I'm not criticising you for asking what you want to know; I'm just not certain there are greater numbers of Mac users here than there are Win7 users in Mac community forums... and, as I said, there is software out there to accomplish conversion - however I cannot recommend something I've never used...

EDIT: If there is a faster protocol other than SMB please post it so I (and others) may use it in the future. I just followed the video exactly as instructed, and my files are transferring. Unfortunately, it says for the 18GB that it will take about 3 hours. I'll be heading to bed and it should be done when I wake up. I'm sure there has to be a faster protocol out there.

No harm felt. I appreciate anyone's help on the forum. I did find several steps which worked wonderfully though this youtube video. Basically, the PC and the Mac will join the network homegroup. I connected to the PC using the following:

server: smb://%username%@%hostname%/users

This is allowing me to transfer the files from the Mac to the PC. However, I had to disable password protected sharing through the homegroup advanced options. The video gives instructions step by step on how to do it. Haha, now others will at least have something to go off of if they have this problem.

Tell me why I just got a random BSOD in the middle of this transfer. In the years my friend has owned her Mac, I don't ever see it freeze and reboot randomly....sigh.