On ebay you can find a device I like called a disk drive 'rack' or carrier. You put it in like a floppy drive, on the other 1/2 you put in any disk drive. Then you can plug in the disk like a floppy and run it anytime you want to look at the drive. This could be something for $14 that would help you to move files from old , hard drive, to a new one $60 for 750gb on amazon. JDMADERA has the disk racks for serial (SATA or parallel) or you can use an external hard drive, or any drive with an external adapter $14. I personally like the reasoning of buying a new drive to put all my files on it. I get a new drive, I copy my old files and test the new drive for a while before I commit to it , and have the chance to sell my old drive while having a backup. Another idea: If many files are text based then zip or RAR them and mail them to yourself. Many mail sites accept 2mb up to 20mb mail attachments. That might handle most of your documents and that way you have them backed up. It's a secondary backup.. you should still have them somewhere else but one site I use has been good to me for 5 years, for free, holding 40mb of stuff. I apoligize if I didn't answer your Q excactly. I'm in a hurry and tried to offer what I could to what I thought I saw in your post.. in a 30 second quick read. Andre

Certainly Open Office is a viable alternative to Microsoft Office depending on your needs because the two platforms are not 100% compatible. Certainly you can try Open Office and see if it meets your needs. I don't know about Quicken but I would imagine there is some kind of "export" feature. Whether you use that in a newer version of Quicken or move on, is up to your. I hear good things about Mint (.com) but haven't used it personally. Microsoft has discontinued Money.

The fact the computer said it was not recognised shows the computer is aware 'something' had been attached. As Kudzu notes, it may be defective. You could ask a family member or friend to try it in another computer to confirm that. You could burn the photos to a CD to give away if you do not want to buy another flash drive.

Here are 2 I have read about over time. Downloaded Coffee Cup a few times but never installed as I still have the free ws_ftp95le program from way back. FileZilla Coffee Cup