Directly connecting 2 PCs via LAN cable - no router etc

General Help
#1

Hi there... its me again!
/joker voice with make up on :nerd_face:

While waiting for replies on another topic, i set about to conduct a small experiment.

I have 2 PCs. Both can dual boot windows/linux mint.

I also have a huge ammount of information to copy from PC1 to PC2.

PC1 is about to be discontinued from use, but i do need to back-up its data.
We are talking about 4 TB of data (movies/ personal files/ software to get into NSA servers..stuff like that :slight_smile: ).

The only way to move such huge data, without removing the drive and without waiting hours long, is to directly connect 2 PCs via a LAN cable.

A router would be a choke point. I know, i did it before. Its sloow. So direct connect is the way forward.

With both PCs booting into windows, this was easy.
Just disable IPv6, use static IPs, set one IP as gateway for the other, enable network discovery, enable sharing on the partition i want to copy from...and voila!

PC1 is visible from PC2 in a direct fashion, without intermediaries, like a router.
All done in 2 minutes or less!

It doesnt seem to be this easy however, when connecting PC1 (windows) to PC2 (zorin or any other linux...). :pensive:

On PC2 (linux), i did set up static IP, disabled IPv6 etc....but i cant seem to be able to view the shared partition from PC1, like i could when PC2 was booted into windows.

Any thoughts?

Thanks alot :slight_smile:

#2

I don't think this is possible without a switch or router in the circuit, unless you have a crossover cable.

2 Likes
#3

In Windows mode - both PCs in windows mode - i did it with a standard straight-through cable, in under 2 minutes.

The issue seems to be software related, not hardware related

#4

It is possible, but may require samba on the Linux machine to see the windows share. Since the windows machine is basically the router, you could try searching samba and Ubuntu 20.04. I'm not a samba user myself, so can only point you in a direction.

Zorin os is based on Ubuntu 20.04, so it provides solutions you won't find for Zorin itself.

Edit:
On a side note, if the drive is sata 3 or you have an adapter for sata to usb3 this would be much faster. Going over network is slightly slower because it must be processed a bit more to transfer.