Portable hard drive mystery regarding copying folder

[mileena]

Hi, I have a 500 GB Hitachi portable hard drive, divided into two partitions, M: and N:, of 250 GB each.

When I copy my documents folder (consisting of Microsoft Word/Excel, Open Office Writer/Calculator, and html docs) from my main computer hard drive (C: ) to Hitachi external partition N: to have as a backup, I get messages that some file names or pathways are too long, and do I want to skip copying them or cancel.

Fine. I just tell it to skip those few files.

But then when I copy the very same documents folder from my main computer hard drive (C: ) to the other Hitachi external partition M: to next day, there never is any message. Everything apparently copied fine.

This happens repeatedly. I get error messages regarding copying for one external partition, but never any errors for the other external partition.

(I copy to one external partition one day and then to the other external partition the next day, as a safety mechanism.)

What is causing this odd behavior?

Thanks!

 

[Dngrsone]

Is the second drive formatted FAT32 or something?

 

[krone6]

Is the second drive formatted FAT32 or something?

More than likely. The primary partition's probably ntfs, he formatted and must have accidently did fat32. I can only do 8-10 characters at most with fat32, up to 64 letters i think with ntfs.

 

[mileena]

Thanks for the advice! I am pretty sure both partitions are NFTS. I did them both at the same time with Windows Partition I believe. Is there a way to check?

 

[krone6]

Thanks for the advice! I am pretty sure both partitions are NFTS. I did them both at the same time with Windows Partition I believe. Is there a way to check?

My Computer>Right click C drive>management>disk management>find the partition and letter>right of the size

I tested this on windows 7, i don't know how similar it is to xp/vista but it should have some similarities.

 

[mileena]

UPDATE: I checked, and both drives are NFTS. Tonight, I copied my Documents folder from C: to the external Hitachi N: drive and everything turned out fine, with no error messages. I have no idea why sometimes I get an error message and sometimes I don.t

Thanks krone6 btw for your help!