[wendel]

How do you convert a CD to a thumb drive? I have a 17in laptop and want to get something in the 10in range, but the small ones do not have a CD player.

Any suggestions as to whether I should get a laptop or something else. I will only use it on trips to get on the internet and use the repair CDs etc. I only want to be in a new computer for a couple hundred dollars.

 

[ccsailor]

Not enough info to give you a straight answer

Are you talking music CD ? installation CD's back ups?

depends??


Either way you are going to need a different computer with a cd driveand usb to copy/convert to a usb stick

Much easier to download what you need on your small 10" from the net

 

[bighorn]

Wendel.....I was faced with the same problems when I inherited a 10" notebook. My first solution was to buy an external CD player that is powered by the notebook via USB cable. Then I came upon the idea of using a small external hard drive. I was going to go with the thumb drives but that would have required more than just a few due to the size of the discs. I used a Western Digital WD3200ME hard drive, size is 5"X3" and just over 1/2" thick. I got all of Freds discs on there without any issues. Hope this helps some.

 

[AUSTENNN]

Your answer is simple I think

A CD is removable storage. A thumbdrive is removable storage that plugs into a USB port. You can put more on thumbdrives than CDs. You don't need a CD drive if you have a USB port on your new computer. Just like you read/write to a CD you do the same with a thumbdrive.

To precisely answer the question..in XP or Win 7 or Vista, look in "My Computer" on your old laptop with the CD in the drive and the thumbdrive in the USB port. Then just drag the files from the CD to the thumbdrive.

i have a 15 inch Dell laptop that I travel with. I top load it in the trunk. Sometimes when I hit a motel without free WIFI (rarely) I find a mall, Starbucks or motel next to a gas station and stand next to the trunk...log in and send/receive while gassing up. Some motels with free WIFI now have a password you get at check in but usually you can find a place for a few minutes.

 

[LordZarkon]

A thumb drive looks like any other drive to your computer.

You can put your CD in the drive and then view it in explorer
and copy the files over to your thumb drive.

You probably wont have the capacity to play an album automatically
like you get when you put the CD in.

However, you could use Windows media player to create playlists
and then play music from them and pointing to the files on the
thumb drive.

I believe the CD files are wav files, and take up more space, but should
work just fine, or you can create MP3's from your CD and save space
if that's an issue.

It should not be a big deal for basic music files. I put music on a thumb
drive and play it in my truck which has a USB connector attached
to the radio.

 

[Fortuneteller]

A CD is removable storage. A thumbdrive is removable storage that plugs into a USB port. You can put more on thumbdrives than CDs. You don't need a CD drive if you have a USB port on your new computer. Just like you read/write to a CD you do the same with a thumbdrive.

To precisely answer the question..in XP or Win 7 or Vista, look in "My Computer" on your old laptop with the CD in the drive and the thumbdrive in the USB port. Then just drag the files from the CD to the thumbdrive.

i have a 15 inch Dell laptop that I travel with. I top load it in the trunk. Sometimes when I hit a motel without free WIFI (rarely) I find a mall, Starbucks or motel next to a gas station and stand next to the trunk...log in and send/receive while gassing up. Some motels with free WIFI now have a password you get at check in but usually you can find a place for a few minutes.

Thats not exactly true. I agree with CCSAILER, there isn't enough information to give a difinitive answer. Many Programs and Games now come on CD/DVD and are compressed to keep you from copying them, so when you copy they will uncompress and a 4gig disk may become 20 gig when copied.

As far as music and pictures, just use your favorite music or photo program and it will copy it for you.

for repair disks, recovery disks and backup disks, just copy from one to the other most are not compressed, OS Disks can be compressed depends on who the manufaturer is.

 

[ccsailor]

Wendel.....I was faced with the same problems when I inherited a 10" notebook. My first solution was to buy an external CD player that is powered by the notebook via USB cable. Then I came upon the idea of using a small external hard drive. I was going to go with the thumb drives but that would have required more than just a few due to the size of the discs. I used a Western Digital WD3200ME hard drive, size is 5"X3" and just over 1/2" thick. I got all of Freds discs on there without any issues. Hope this helps some.

Oh Yeah forgot about those
did not think they were still available

 

[wendel]

I am looking to download Fred's maintenance discs and exercise discs. Bighorn the external drive I believe you are talking about looks to be the size of a flat cell phone. A salesman at Wal-Mart suggested one that held 1 Tigabyte (?). It was supposed to hold the most information. Do I just load the information on that and plug in through the USB port.

I just want to have a smaller package when I travel.

 

[seabear70]

depending on what you want to set up, unetbootin http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Can be handy.

However, as has been pointed out, what you want to do kinda depends.

 

[bighorn]

Yes, that is how I use it. It should come with a USB cord that'll plug into your computer USB port. The drive is powered by the computer, so that's all you need. My drive is 320g and that's plenty of space to hold the discs. A 1t drive will certainly hold the maitenance discs and the exercise vids you want with gobs of space left.

 

[bighorn]

The main reason I used the small hard drive was that I already had it, and didn't have any thumb drives that would hold the entire set of discs. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

[joe_flash]

There are a number of options.

1. Buy a copy of Alcohol 110%. This is a program that lets you not only burn CD/DVDs, but make soft copies (an image file) of the cd/dvd that you can copy onto your hard drive. Then you use it on your notebook/laptop to mount the image and use it as you would if you had it in an actual drive. I like this option because, while it's a bit more involved, you can buy a LOT more hard drive space on a netbook for the money than you can in thumbdrives. The average netbook has between 250-500 GB of storage, and the mounted image will perform MUCH better than any thumbdrive.

2. Copying the DVDs to a thumb drive would take a separate thumb drive for each DVD. Otherwise you risk overwriting the menu structure and keeping things from working correctly.

3. There ARE small-profile external USB DVD drives out there.. Check Amazon, Frys, TigerDirect, and such to see what they have.

Other options depend on what device you want to carry. I just bought a Motorola XOOM tablet. Less bulky than a netbook, a bit more of a pain to type on, but for email, web browsing, and stuff you're likely to do on the road, it's very lightweight and easy to use gadget. It does not have an internal hard drive, but comes with a USB cable that allows you to connect an external hard drive. Alcohol isn't an option here, but there may be another similar option that I don't know about yet.

I have a 10" HP netbook that is twice the weight of the zoom, but has a huge hard drive and can contain any data I want to take on the road with me. Probably going to sell this once I have the XOOM set up.

Copying the DVDs to a thumb drive would take a separate thumb drive for each DVD. Otherwise you risk overwriting the menu structure and keeping things from working correctly.

Either a small portable hard drive or a thumb drive can be plugged into the either the XOOM or a netbook. You don't need to worry about how big a hard drive to buy; anything over 300 GB will probably store all the stuff you would want to take and all the videos/pictures you take along the way. With thumb drives, you have to be more concerned with space, as the tend to come in smaller sizes, and the 32GB and larger thumb drives start getting up there in cost with the portable hard drives with hundreds of GB of space. You can also buy HDs that are powered by the USB port, but your netbook may not provide enough power for it, so you'd still have to carry a power supply for it..

Confused? Welcome to my world..