Can't copy large folders/files.

[Coldkilla]

I want to backup 300gbs between external hard drives. But many of my files are 15gb's large and cannot be transfered. No errors or anything display. I tried this in Vista and it said the file was too large to move. So I formatted (was going to anyway) back to Windows XP. I still cannot copy the large files.

Is there anyway I can end up copying them? Thanks!

 

[AnnonUSA]

What is the format of the External drives? FAT will accept a 4GB Max file size. Make sure the external drives are NTFS.

 

[Coldkilla]

They actually are FAT drives. Can I convert them without harming the data currently on there?

 

[George P Burdell]

I have this problem with my WD external drives as well. Thank goodness Seagate had the good sense of using NTFS for their external drives.

 

[Coldkilla]

I guess I'll copy all of the information out somewhere, format the drive, and hopefully have the option to make it NTFS.... Unless I could avoid it all together??

 

[Allanv]

you can just convert the file system without formatting

 

[AnnonUSA]

use the convert command....

Convert /? at the cmd prompt

 

[0roo0roo]

doesn't the convert thing leave you with extra small clusters or something silly?

 

[0roo0roo]

If you use the Convert utility to convert a volume from FAT to NTFS, Windows always uses a 512-byte cluster size. FAT structures are aligned on 512-byte boundaries; a larger cluster size does not allow conversion.http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314878