[mountaineer]

Just bought an external hard drive with 160GB memory. I tried to download all of my present hard drive file 32GB to the external one. It transfered 4GB and then I got an error message saying "you have either run out of space or the backup file is too large for the disk. Note, if the disk is formatted with FAT32 the maximum possible size for the backup file is limited to 4GB."
I have no idea what all of this means. Can you help me? I have windows XP.

 

[griffinspc]

Basically you're trying to make a 32GB file fit in a space that's only allowing a maximum of 4GB's which is the file size limit for FAT 32. You'll need to format the external drive to the NTFS file system to accomplish this single file copy. The other choice if you leave it at FAT 32 is to divide the backup file into chunks smaller than 4 GB's.

 

[griffinspc]

Sorry, should have added that the standard file format for XP is NTFS. FAT32 and NTFS are both terms used to describe the format that a drive is structed in. You likely will want to reformat the drive to NTFS which is very easy to do.

 

[griffinspc]

To convert the destination drive to NTFS:

Click Start, click Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management.

Click Disk Management.
Right-click the volume (disk) you want to format (or reformat), and then click Format. Select the options you want, and then click OK.

I did this from memory since I use a W2K machine here but I think it's the correct steps for XP.

 

[mountaineer]

I have now reformatted my external memory to NTFS and I was able to backup all of the stuff on my main hard drive in one click. How do you get stuff from one memory to the other. Suppose I have something on my external drive I want to get to the main one how do I do this? Also, the other way? All I have done is copy from one to the other. Thanks.

 

[griffinspc]

I have now reformatted my external memory to NTFS and I was able to backup all of the stuff on my main hard drive in one click. How do you get stuff from one memory to the other. Suppose I have something on my external drive I want to get to the main one how do I do this? Also, the other way? All I have done is copy from one to the other. Thanks.

Well if it's an exact copy you would need to open the external drive in Explorer and just drill to the appropriate folder, "copy" whatever files (let's say a group of Word documents) then navigate to the main hard drive, and the folder you want to place them in, and "paste".

It's no different than copying and pasting anywhere else on your puter hard drive it's just now you have 2 hard drives. You didn't use a backup program (at least I don't thing you did since you said, "All I have done is copy from one to the other." that might require that you "restore" from one drive to the other but if you had you'd wait until you lose some info or files and then restore it to it's original state at the time of the backup.

Does that help?

 

[mountaineer]

Well if it's an exact copy you would need to open the external drive in Explorer and just drill to the appropriate folder, "copy" whatever files (let's say a group of Word documents) then navigate to the main hard drive, and the folder you want to place them in, and "paste".

It's no different than copying and pasting anywhere else on your puter hard drive it's just now you have 2 hard drives. You didn't use a backup program (at least I don't thing you did since you said, "All I have done is copy from one to the other." that might require that you "restore" from one drive to the other but if you had you'd wait until you lose some info or files and then restore it to it's original state at the time of the backup.

Does that help?

 

[mountaineer]

No, it doesn't help. I really don't know what you are saying. I went to system backup in system tools and backuped my regular hard drive to the external one. You said you would have to open the external drive in explorer and just drill it to it??? How do you do this. Thanks for your help.

 

[griffinspc]

If you used system backup then what I said first about navigating in Explorer is useless. What I said second about restoring is accurate. Check this link for some background info.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx