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Questions tagged [data-transfer]

315 questions
141
votes
5 answers

Why is serial data transmission faster than parallel?

Intuitively, you would think that parallel data transmission should be faster than serial data transmission; in parallel you are transferring many bits at the same time, whereas in serial you are doing one bit at a time. So what makes SATA…
modest
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75
votes
11 answers

Does streaming use the same amount of bandwidth as downloading?

Assuming the content is of the same quality (ceteris paribus), does streaming media (i.e. video, audio) use the same amount of bandwidth as downloading it? Say I was to download an HD movie from Amazon or stream it, would it be the equivalent use of…
stemie
  • 869
48
votes
3 answers

Does "Stopping" USB drives actually affect the drive?

I have always just unplugged my USB drives from my computer for years and nothing bad has happened; but I heard that you are supposed to use "Safely Remove Hardware" before removing a drive. What does the "Safely Remove Hardware" program do (besides…
Nate Koppenhaver
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48
votes
3 answers

What is the difference between a kibibyte, a kilobit, and a kilobyte?

This question got me wondering about the differences between these three ways of measuring size: a kibibyte, a kilobit, and the conventional kilobyte. I understand that these measurements have different uses (data transfer rate is measured in…
Redandwhite
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45
votes
5 answers

PC to PC file transfer with USB-C ↔ USB-C or USB-C ↔ USB ordinary cables. Is it possible?

I have a Win 10 64-bit HP laptop (model: 15-dw0088ca) which has 1 USB-C port and two USB ports. Can I use an ordinary USB-C ↔ USB-C cable, like the one in Pic 1, to transfer files from this HP computer to another one that also has an USB-C…
Robert Werner
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39
votes
16 answers

Best way to get data off a computer with no support for USB or Ethernet?

A customer has a computer running Windows 98 (I know, cringe) and needs to take some data off the computer to put on a new laptop. I've tried using USB, but Windows 98 doesn't have USB storage drivers. I thought I'd transfer the data via Ethernet…
Connor W
  • 4,021
37
votes
6 answers

How can I Transfer Google Chrome's Data and Settings to another Google Account?

I use Google Chrome and I have 100s of bookmarks, history, search preferences, search engines, extensions, and apps installed. I want to have a new Google account, and I need to move everything from my current account to the new one. I did sign in…
Dheeraj Thedijje
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27
votes
4 answers

How to search for newline or linebreak characters in Excel?

I've imported some data into Excel (from a text file) and it contains some sort of newline characters. It looks like this initially: If I hit F2 (to edit) then Enter (to save changes) on each of the cells with a newline (without actually editing…
Highly Irregular
  • 3,121
26
votes
4 answers

Entropy of file in network transfer

If we ignore application layer file compression (such as Mega, or iCloud compressing a file before transfer), does the contents of a file affect the speed of transfer? i.e. - all things being equal, does the underlying internet/routers/phy layer,…
Woodstock
  • 407
24
votes
2 answers

Performance difference between SD and MicroSD cards?

If you compare a MicroSD card with an advertised speed of 48 MB/S to a full size SD card with an advertised speed of 48 MB/S (from the same manufacturer), should their performances be identical? Or is there anything about the size reduction of a…
Amazon Dies In Darkness
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24
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1 answer

What data transfer rates are needed or streaming HD 1080p or 720p video, or standard quality video?

Want to know data transfer rates for streaming video, such as from an external hard drive, or from an NAS or a home network. All I'm asking about is the data transfer speeds for clean video streaming.
superuser
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15
votes
5 answers

How does a hard drive know where the data starts?

I was always wondering how a hard drive finds the first bit of data. When a hard drive spins up, whatever it reads must be a circular stream of data until the reading head moves to a different position. But in such a circular stream, how does the…
uzumaki
  • 300
14
votes
3 answers

Sending text file contents to server using netcat?

There is a daemon process listening on port 5144, which I cannot to modify. I want to use netcat to send the contents of a text file to the server, but this causes netcat to hang the terminal until I press Ctrl+C: cat file.txt | nc -u 127.0.0.1…
Amil
  • 261
12
votes
6 answers

Transferring a large amount of data between continents

Possible Duplicate: Free way to share large files over the Internet? What are some options for transfering large files without using the Internet? My wife's lab is doing a project here in the US with collaborators in Singapore. They occasionally…
Frank
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12
votes
5 answers

How to fix Excel and prevent it from converting copy-pasted or imported strings to dates even when cells are formatted as text

Every time I copy-paste some numerical data written as fractions or separated by hyhens into Excel, it always converts numbers that could possibly be dates into dates. There's no way of getting them back to the original formatting (as copied). Even…
Turkeyphant
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