Having issues transferring files to external HD

GVSS

Baseband Member
Messages
58
So I'm tying to do a fresh install of windows xp, so I was backing up files to my external HD and I ran into a problem.

When I tried to drag and drop a 13 GB file, it said "there is not enough room" When I check the properties of the drive, there are 138 free GB's! Whats the deal?

File was from pirate bay and downloaded with uTorrent. any ideas on why this would happen?

thanks
 
What filing system is the external drive using? If it's using FAT, then that would be why - FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GB. If you want to store files larger than this, you'll need to use something like NTFS.
 
I would imagine its NTFS since I have music folder with 20GB of files in it, and a photos folder with 30+ GB's in it.

But if the limit is file specific then I'm not sure. No single file in either of those folders approaches 4GB.

Some of the files I'm trying to transfer would def be over 4gb for a single file (like and .iso)

I'll look into it.

Thanks Berry

EDIT - Just checked, its FAT 32 so that is probably the issue.
 
So I read over the link you posted and it seems fairly straight forward, I just want to verify that I CAN format to NTFS with data on the external HD and NOT lose it, correct?

thanks guys
 
It's not called formatting, that erases all the data on a drive - but yes, you can CONVERT the file system to NTFS without losing any data :)

EDIT: I'd back the important stuff up though, just in case...!
 
So I read over the link you posted and it seems fairly straight forward, I just want to verify that I CAN format to NTFS with data on the external HD and NOT lose it, correct?

thanks guys
No, you won't lose anything.
 
So I tried to convert my external HD to NTFS and, while in the command promt, it said that the disc is dirty and that I needed to run chkdsk.

I've never had to run chkdsk before and I wanted to check to see if it will erase my data on the drive or just repair the bad or "dirty" sections?

thanks
 
Back
Top Bottom