If you’re a regular reader of the Finish Line Blog, you know that I don’t pull these topics out of thin air. Yesterday was my wife’s ballet school’s year end ballet, Coppelia. In the interest of cross promoting, visit nccballetandvoice.com to learn more about her school. My step brother, Brett Garamella (brettgaramella.com), is an accomplished photographer and filmmaker. He shot exactly 1,018 photos of the event. The question became, how could we transfer his photos to my wife’s computer? Well, that seemed like a good thing to write about.
There are two ways to copy files from one computer to another: via physical storage media, or through the Internet. When the show ended yesterday, Brett headed home to download and edit his work, while we stayed and broke down sets. That ruled out using option one. Had Brett stayed at the theater, and Tory brought her flash drive or external hard drive with her, she could have plugged them into his computer and immediately had a copy of the photos to then transfer to her computer. So, our only option was to download them from the Internet. I’m sure you’ve encountered e-mail message limits before. Gmail, for instance, limits the size of a single e-mail to 25 megabytes (MB). Consider that a single, full-size image can have a file size of 5 MB (or larger), and you’ll see that e-mailing is not practical, as Brett would have had to send upwards of two hundred e-mails to get them to Tory!
A better solution is to use a file transfer service. WeTransfer is free to use if you have two gigabytes (GB) or less to send. Simply press the (+Add FIles) button, and browse your computer to locate the files, enter your e-mail address, enter the e-mail address of the person you’d like to send the files to, and click “Transfer”. Dropsend is another option. Sign up for a free account that allows you to send up to four GB of files. Just as with WeTransfer, type your e-mail address, the recipient’s address, click “Select a File” to browse for your files, and then “Send Your File”. Are you familiar with Dropbox? Dropbox is capable of doing this as well. Finally, if you have your own website and hosting account, simply upload your files, and send the other person a link to download what you wish to share.
It can be daunting when trying to transfer a large number of files. In the previous example of the ballet, Brett opted for WeTransfer to get Tory the files. Don’t forget to think big, however. as it’s not just the number of files that can be a problem. In real estate, for example, closing packages are massive in file size. Consider these possibilities whenever you need to share large files.