External HD - Says HD's Full and there's 220gb free space!

[RyBoy]

I've tried sending a dvd (ripped) across the network and it says halfway through the transfer that the HD's full. I knew it wasn't, haven't put much on it, and there is 220gb of free space!

So, I tried ripping a dvd on the computer that the external hd (ripped the dvd straight to external hd) is hooked up to and once again around 80% done it mysteriously says that the external hd is full! The external hd is not even close to full! What's going on, is my external hd bad or what?

 

[BigCoolJesus]

try putting just a huge file directly from the computer HDD to the external HDD, and see what it does

 

[alevasseur14]

I guess I'd try moving everything that is on it to another drive and formatting it. Then you can move things back to it and see if that fixes your problem.

 

[mmike70]

Is your ext HD formatted as FAT32? Most are out of the box.

FAT32 has a max file size of approx. 4GB. If so, reformat to NTFS and you'll be ok.

 

[RyBoy]

Okay great guys, I did not format it out of the box. Only question is how do I format an external hard drive to ntfs?

 

[alcoholbob]

Wouldn't updating to SP2 also fix this issue?

 

[mmike70]

Right click on the external hard drive in My Computer, select Format... and make sure that under "File System" it says NTFS and click start.

 

[imported_Phil]

Or if you just want to convert it....

Start -> Run -> cmd

convert x: /fs:ntfs
where x: is the drive letter. Note that there's no space between /fs and :ntfs.

 

[Tennoh]

1st thing you should do is run Chkdsk /r. Confirm there's no errors on the volume itself. Deleting the entire volume or attempting to convert is a knee jerk action without analysis.

Also the good thing about Chkdsk is that it reports everything in use. Windows Explorer does not in its free space calculation. That's a fact. For instance Windows Explorer would not report ADS, Alternate Data Stream, files that are hidden but can consume large portions.

ADS linked files are a pain since you never know they exist until you run into file problems. ADS isn't usually a problem unless you have a mixed network environment with Apple and Unix. But I've noticed more Windows programs using ADS for 'extra' features. Roxio 8 is a clear example.