Solved Ethernet transfer data to new Win 8.1 PC?

I've been going through hell since last July, with an older PC ( Q8300 CPU ) that I upgraded from Win 7 to 10. I finally decided to get a newer PC and just move everything over to it and toss the old one. ( everything from BIOS to chipset to video card seems to be wrong, since Windows 10, and I've spent countless hours and been in the Ten Forum trying to fix it )

The new PC is an AMD FX-8310 with Windows 8.1 ( why I'm here ). I bought a crossover ethernet cable ( Cat 5? ) and just hooked it up between them. I've been installing programs on the new one all week and have finally gotten it to where I can run my part time home business again. I JUST need to get all the gigabytes of data over to the new one now.

So I googled: ethernet cable transfer files between computers "Windows 8.1"
and found lots of how-to's, but they all seem to show way different screen photos and procedures than what I appear to be dealing with here, and I'm kinda stumped.

I'm running on a home wifi network that I set up. I understand that the ethernet cable can transfer raw data MUCH faster. I JUST need to figure out a simple way that shows MY screens here, to set it up now.

Thanks!

This evening, I found and tried this, but it didn't work and the ping fails.

Connect PCs Using a Crossover Ethernet Cable

You have to set the IP manually on both PC's post the IP subnet for both PCs

Actually, I got it working last night! The IP settings may or may not have been the problem. I actually had them set to finding their own IP when I found out what it was.

It was where I was ( or wasn't looking ). For the wifi connection, I had seen the other PC under the Net path. But for this, I had to look deeper, under Entire Network, then Microsoft Windows Network, then Ether1 ( the work group name I'd used ) , THEN under B ( I had named the new PC "A" and the old one "B". And there I had it, folks - it works!

I tested it by copying over my DOCUMENTS folder last night, which was about 2.3GB, in under 10 minutes. It blazes!

I may not have thought this out very well. I checked my old PC's drive and I have 239GB of space used. Some of that is programs but much of it is data that needs to be moved to the new PC now. So the ethernet connection may just be too slow too.

On the old PC, I have a Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U drive docking station. I've mirrored the drive to it. It's plugged into the ESATA port in the old PC and only has USB 2 in addition to that.

The new PC doesn't appear to have an ESATA port but does have USB 3 ports.

So I'm thinking it might be faster to move all this data by getting a ST0005U-D updated version of the docking station for the new PC. It has USB 3 as well as ESATA III. It could be plugged into the old PC, the drive could be mirrored ( Last time I did that win Acronis, mirroring the whole drive took less than a half hour, if I recall ), then it could be plugged into the new PC's USB 3 port and data could be transferred.

The only potential kink that I'm wondering about, is that the old PC has Windows 10 and the new PC has Windows 8.1. If I mirror the old drive onto a drive in a newer ST0005U-D, and then move the station to the new PC and plug it into the USB 3 port, will the data still be readable and transferrable to the new PC?