old embroidery designs
 

OK, I got the new machines, now I am looking though my old embroidery designs. Oh my! Some are on floppies, some are on CD's going back to it looks like 1999. so I have been attempting to transfer some of the designs to my USB sticks. It has been a learning experience. Some of them, I can transfer using my explorer and my desktop, others, not so much. The ones that seem to be the problem are ones that came with an "installer program" which worked great on those computers that worked good with the older windows versions way back then but will not work now and I can't find the specific embroidery designs on the disk. Would you believe, I did get some files off an old floppy disc unto my usb stick using an external floppy drive I had around. Bottom line, it is not only the newer computerized machines that do not last very long, it is all the old technology that stops working on our newer stuff. Oh, and I noticed that some of my CD discs have a cloudy film on them that have been stored in the plastic wrapper they came in. Yikes and now I hear, new computers and devices are only coming with 1 USB port and no CD drives...everything is going to the cloud I guess. I guess just call me..."old relic". tee hee

When I have my computer built I always ask for items that you don't get anymore on pre-built computers. I also keep an external floppy drive in case I have to go to one of those old floppies we loved so many years ago. Most of my designs that are on floppies or CDs have been transferred over to my computer just for these type of issues. I had my guys add an extra hard drive just for my embroidery and quilting designs so they're not on the main hard drive. True either one of the hard drives could crash but at least if its the main computer drive I still have my designs safe. I also back them up every few months just to be safe in case both drives crash which is a possibility. I haven't figured out the "Cloud" thing yet.

It's true, any media can degrade after a while, and for sure there is an ever-changing stream of technology to keep moving forward with or get stranded by, lol. I agree w/Snooze, get a second hard drive (external or internal) and be sure to keep the data backed up there. Cloud services - all well and good, but I do tend to like to actually have a copy with me in my house.

You should be able to extra the design in the format that your machine uses. I delete the other file extensions as they aren't needed. Take the file you want directly and do a copy/paste of that file to the USB.

I also use back-up hard drives for the EMB designs. There is also an extender that has multiple plugs for USB. Plug the extender into the one port and then plug the other USB sticks into it. The embroidery machines have limits to how much they can read off an USB. I use sticks with a smaller amount of memory and only put the working designs on it.

If you do happen to have a computer without a CD drive you can purchase an external one that connects to the computer via the USB. I have one here on my desk that I use almost every day. We live in the country where the internet isn't always reliable, so for homeschooling I always opt for DVD curriculum over the streaming! Especially important when road schooling with an RV. We took a 3 month road trip 1 1/2 years ago and the internet in RV parks is terrible. I was really glad we had the CD drive!

I only last weekend transferred the majority of my embroidery designs to USB thumb drives. Low and behold my computer crashed two days later. Many of them go back as far as yours do and are priceless. A number of the cd.s were degraded and information totally lost. But I got the majority of the designs and feel great about that. I am glad that you are starting the process. Anymore it is way to important.

Thanks every one for the cautions and suggestions. I don't know that I am going to do a lot of embroidery as I love the quilting best but I do want to do some. I have so many designs on disks that I am embarrassed. Some I have not even done one stitch out of and some of them I have done many. I think I will prioritize the designs that I want to keep the most and go from there. As I now have two machines that can do embroidery, I will need to keep the designs that work the best in each on them. I have a Viking and a Bernina. Sounds like .PES the best one to use in the Bernina if it is not a specific Bernina design and Viking over the years has had a lot of different ones but will read the PES.

I have all my embroidery designs saved on an external hard drive, and only the ones I wish to use for a project go onto the usb. If you have too many on the usb, the machine takes too long to recognize each one.

I know.....and I had a little trouble in locating some 1 gb USB sticks to use....had to get them on Amazon. I could not find any locally.

Hello,

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