Copying files onto a USB hard drive

[meeja]

Whilst in the process of upgrading my PC from W2K to XP, I backed all of my files onto an external drive... but kept getting a message saying "There is not enough free space" (There was at least 20gB free space, with recycle bin emptied etc etc)

The files in question were 4.36gB DVD ISO files.

I ended up connecting an old 40gB HDD to a spare IDE channel, formatting it, copying the files to there, then disconnecting it, and reconnecting it after the upgrade to copy the files back across (What a palava!)

I assumed that the "Not enough space" problem was a W2K issue due to the size of the single file...... but I get the same message now I am running XP Pro.

Any ideas?

[rich1231]

how did you format the usb drive?

NTFS has quite high file size limits..

for fat32 its 4GB...maybe the usb device is pre-formatted to fat32?

[Scraggles]

all drives are now ntfs, had that problem when copying isos to the hdd, no longer

[rich1231]

Scraggles said:

all drives are now ntfs, had that problem when copying isos to the hdd, no longer

what do you mean all drives are ntfs..

you have to qualify a statement like that.

Lots of drives out there are not ntfs

[meeja]

rich1231 said:

how did you format the usb drive?

NTFS has quite high file size limits..

for fat32 its 4GB...maybe the usb device is pre-formatted to fat32?

Ah!

Well spotted that man......

It was pre-formatted when I bought it...... in FAT32 format!

Ta muchly!

Meeja