External Harddrive "Full"

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blazin

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 18, 2008
Messages
96
Hey guy, I'm not sure if I'm in the right section or what not, but I have a problem with my external harddrive. It is a Western Digital 500GB external harddrive, it says its "FAT32" under properties with total size of 465 and space free of 159, but when I try to add files of around 6 gigs it tells me its full. I am running Vista 64 bit buissiness edition. Any help?
 
blazin said:
Hey guy, I'm not sure if I'm in the right section or what not, but I have a problem with my external harddrive. It is a Western Digital 500GB external harddrive, it says its "FAT32" under properties with total size of 465 and space free of 159, but when I try to add files of around 6 gigs it tells me its full. I am running Vista 64 bit buissiness edition. Any help?
Click to expand...

I believe FAT32 cannot handle files above 4GB. You can move all the files off the HDD and format it to NTFS.
 
OH WOW .. is that what it is??? ... I SEE !!! THANK GOD =) I love you guys. What would I have to do about converting it?
 
blazin said:
OH WOW .. is that what it is??? ... I SEE !!! THANK GOD =) I love you guys. What would I have to do about converting it?
Click to expand...

I haven't done it in years but you should be able to just click format and select NTFS instead of FAT32. It will delete all your files, so make sure to move whatever you want off the drive onto another HDD.

Or you could just winrar the 6GB file into two 3GB .rar chunks.
 
Yea, you mays well just format and make sure to format in NTFS. That will save you any future headaches.
 
old OS ... meaning XP? Its such a headache though because I have almost 400gigs of stuff on it and no where to temp store it ... my laptop + desktop combine are less than 300gigs .... I'm working on a new hardrive for the desktop ... using an old IDE from a previous comp.
 
I know XP has a built in command line tool to convert fat32 to ntfs without file loss, no idea about vista. google around a bit to find out about it.
 
Is the data on your external drive just copies of stuff on your other computers? If so, you are relatively safe. If it is the only copy of any of your data, you are playing with fire. If your drive decides to take a dump on you, your data could be gone with little or no hope of recovery.:mad:

Just a friendly reminder.

Don
 
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