Link Safe

Dropbox  it will just get on with the job-but if you’re in a hurry to get things up and running then we’d suggest using your external hard drive. First, connect it to one of your existing PCs and used

Windows Explorer (Windows key+E) to copy the entire contents of your Dropbox folder. Now download the Dropbox program.

Before actually installing it, we’d advise temporarily disabling your laptop’s Wi-Fi connection to disconnect it from the internet (left-click the Wi-Fi icon in the Notification Area then click your network connection followed by the Disconnect button). It isn’t absolutely essential to do so but, if you don’t, you may end up with some ‘conflicted files’ as Dropbox will try immediately to download existing files from your cloud archive while the folder is copied across from your external hard drive. For similar reasons, we’d also advise pausing Dropbox synchronisation on your Windows 7 PCs. To do this, right-click the Dropbox icon in the Notification Area then, in the pop-up box, left-click the cog icon and choose ‘Pause syncing’. Next, drag and drop the copied files and folders from your external hard drive to the Dropbox folder on your new computer. When all the files have copied across, re-enable your laptop’s Wi-Fi connection.

Dropbox shouldn’t need to download any of your files and folders, but it will need to spend some time indexing what you’ve copied across - and with 25GB of data that could take an hour or more. However, you can carry on using your PC as normal and let Dropbox get on with the job.