How Can I Access a 2nd C Drive Linking 2 PC’s With USB Data ‘Transfer’ Cable

[Bondppq]

Hello, I am using a special data transfer cable with particular softwares: Bravura & PCLinq5 to link 2 mini-PC sticks together to recognize each other’s C Drives to wipe them clean and reformat to them, but I’m not able to see the C Drives of each no matter what I do. Both use Win 11. Is there any software that I can download that can see both C Drives? Any suggestions please is appreciated. thank you

 

[DVDR_Dog]

That sounds like a pretty stodgy and complicated way to solve a fairly easy task. I don't think I would ever encounter such a technical tangle. I am about to do somewhat the same thing here if I am reading this correctly. I have an outboard NVMe USB enclosure, going to mirror the existing 512 GB NVMe drive to a brand new shiny 2TB Intel NVMe 670 SSD (80 bucks shipped @ Newegg!). My biggest dilemma is whether Acronis or Macrium is better suited. Installing the program is the most complex part of the task. Have fun fiddling around with all that technology. I would suggest trying the manufacturer and seeing how they want you to use their product, frankly never heard of it and haven't used that sort of thing since laplink.

UPDATE: OK who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? I just finished the clone with EaseUS Partition Master. I always use the program to take a look at disks before I do any operations with it. EaseUs can do things such as format protected disks or with other troublesome formats. So I fire it up with the new drive inside the outboard enclosure and guess what pops up? "I see you have a blank hard disk, would you like to clone the existing drive?" Heck yes I would so I click the go ahead button. Worked like a champ folks, currently posting from that system with the new 2TB SSD installed. No difference other than I gained 1.5 TB of onboard storage. Who knew? For the record a Win 11 Pro 64 bit system, a native 512GB SSD NVMe SSD. Give it a try, Doggie endorsed.

 

[ThumperTM]

EaseUS Partition Master

Which version do you use? is it cracked or legit one?

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Shh! It's unlimited version 16.5 crackshash. I'm sure the later update works too. This version works great for me no trouble. It was probably the latest version when I loaded it. I wonder what else it's capable of doing? It's my Swiss Army Knife of disk and USB stick maintenance. It never lets me down and is capable of some tasks that I can't get Windows utilities to do even using CLI commands.

 

[Bondppq]

I have 3 Asus TS10 VivoSticks with Win 10 on them and 1 AceMacigian Pro mini-PC box with Win 11 on it. On the Asus stix (Win 10) I find it impossible to "fully" turn off automatic updates, and it floods the 32gb drive to a mere 100's mb size. On the Ace box (Win 11) I see the option of turning off automatic updates so far.

I can’t do a reinstall of Win 10 on the stix nor install any 3rd-party softwares to convert them to a Linux system because of the lack of disk space. So I’m giving up on MSFT and trying to wipe all drives and re-format the file system to EXT4 and install Debian with a Deepin distro. But I still can’t get Linux on the drives because there is no space on any 32 gb stix.

I tried this using Rufus and BalenaEtcher but to no avail, so I bought a USB data transfer cable with Bravura and PCLinq5 to try and link 2 stix and remotely wipe one drive through the cable but the target C Drive does not show up under File Explorer - This PC so I can’t reformat it to install Linux Debian / Deepin. I also tried Eassos DiskGenius to remotely access the 2nd stix target C Drive but its not being recognized.

I want to do the same for the Ace box and wipe Win 11 off and go Linux but that is not crucial right now since I have 256 gb size on that drive and auto updates is turned off so the stix is the first hurdle with the box being done right afterwards if I’m successful at this. But I’m not sure what else I can do here, is all of this possible?

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Tell you what Bondppq you are way out of my league and quite honestly I have no idea how to do that. You are trying to turn a very purpose built appliance into a general purpose system. It's going to be a tough project and you are going to end up with a system with extremely limited resources with no way to add any more. It's been done, check the web but you are going to end up with not much. I get it, more of a challenge and I wish you luck.

 

[Bondppq]

So getting back to this problem after I had to shelf it for a holiday week, I decided not to get back into solving the problem myself because I can't stand the time kill torture any longer.

So I'm just going to bring the mini-PC's to a computer shop and tell them to do it for me instead. But I have one last question for this forum -

Can I have 3 different bootable Linux distro each on their own partitions on 1 USB thumbdrive, but what would happen when you insert the thumbdrive?

Would a boot menu load first asking the user which partition you would like to start from? I would like to eliminate any extra steps so that I can just plug in the thumbdrive and it goes into an autoloader mode to install the Linux distro, but a simple boot menu as described above is fine besides anything else further. Will this be possible and how much space would I need for this per partition, per Linux distro? thank you.

 

[Bondppq]

And with a new USB - (SanDisk Ultra Luxe 32GB USB 3.1 SDCZ74-032G-G46) after reformatting to EXT4 for these partitions will I be wiping away any vital Linux drivers or kernels that would prevent me from doing the set up what I’ve described above?

 

[DVDR_Dog]

You have some real mongrel hard drive configurations. It's not what a typical software copy program expects to find . If you brought that to my shop I would have used forensic drive mirroring hardware. They can be had for about $20 USD and will do a bit for bit copy and put things on the new drive exactly as they were on the old one. You are making a very simple job into a very complex "what if" problem. If that's your intention, have fun. I hope you can find a shop to placate you. As I already mentioned, that's how a pro would deal with it, no muss no fuss and it would work.

 

[Bondppq]

why would it be complex, having a USB in 3 partitions and autoboots in each so I can plug it into any PC to load and test out distros...in theory, that should be easy. I would think.

 

[aisha002]

If you want to access a second C drive by linking two PCs using a USB data transfer cable, there are a few steps you can take. First, make sure both computers are turned off and connect the USB cable to the USB ports on each computer. Turn on both computers and wait for them to recognize each other. Once recognized Printer, open the File Explorer on one of the computers and navigate to the "This PC" section. You should see a new drive icon labeled with the name of the other computer. Click on this drive to access its files and folders, including the second C drive. Keep in mind that you may need to adjust some settings on both computers to allow for file sharing and access to drives.