Transfer large files with Active Backup Expert software

Recently I've got to reinstall Windows XP on a notebook computer with a not working CD-ROM drive. The hardest task appeared transferring the XP installation (about 500Mb total) to the notebook from my home computer.

What media to use?

CD-ROM of the notebook doesn't work. All I had was a floppy drive and a USB port. Considering the speed of floppy disks and the number of required iterations to handle 500Mb I decided that it just won't do.

Yes, some USB device with RAM on it would solve the problem. So that I found an old cell phone, connected it to my home PC and found out that I have a nice removable drive with 67Mb of free space.

Which tool to use?

The first idea coming to my mind was to zip the installation (to make it a large solid file) and then to use DosNavigator to split it across my removable disk.

But next moment a better idea appeared. What tool can (1) Make a single large file from a number of files; (2) Split this large file across removable media? Bingo! It's the Active Backup Expert!

The Process

I opened the ABE on my home PC, and created a project that includes all the files of the XP installation. As the Storage Folder value I selected the newly connected cell phone. Of course I enabled the "Self-Extracting" option to avoid the necessity to install the ABE onto the notebook.

All I had to do was pressing the "Backup" button. As soon as the ABE completed writing the first part of the backup file, I safely-disconnected the phone from the home PC and connected it to the notebook. I started our SFX-backup exe-file right from the phone and told it to extract itself to the "C:\install" folder of the notebook.

The rest was easy: wait for the SXF backup to complete reading a part, switch the phone to another computer, remove the previous part, wait for the ABE to write the next part, switch the phone back, etc. Every time before writing the next part the ABE offered to free some space on the phone. So I selected the previous part to be removed - anyway it was already read on the notebook.

After the 8th jump the SFX backup finalized its job of combining the parts and extracted the XP installation files. That was all.

More options

To speed up the process I could use one more cell phone (or a flash drive, or a photo camera or another USB device). While the SFX backup was reading its part from the first USB device on the notebook, the other USB device could be connected to the home PC abd the ABE could write next part of the SFX backup. The ABE uses all free space of the disk for splitting, you know. So that there was no need to care about the sizes of the two USB disks.

One more advantage of the ABE use to transfer files is its ability to handle very huge files. Just set the project to make a CAB-format backup with 2Gb limit for a volume. The ABE will handle the sequence of 2Gb-volumes internally as if it was a single backup file.

Need to transfer files? Try the ABE!

The ABE wasn't developed intendedly for the purpose of transfering files. You can consider it just a pleasant "side -effect". However, the ABE seems to do the job well.

Please download your free trial of Active Backup Expert Pro at

ABE Pro - online backup software (4 Mb)