WD 1TB hard drive issue

tara1999

Hi guys,

I recently purchased a Western Digital 1TB Book HD and have a bit of an issue. When I try to put my ISO files ( 4.7gb ) onto my hard drive, it tells me that the file is too large for the destination drive when there is about 700 gb free!!! Any idea's?

feylya

You have it formatted as FAT 32. You can't put 4 gig files onto that file system.

ronkmonster

it's formated using fat32 which has file size limit of 4gb

format as ntfs

tara1999

Cheers guys. Yea just checked and it is Fat32. How to I change it? Do I format it and if I do will I loose everything on the drive?

feylya

You need to reformat and you will loose everything you have on the drive.

ronkmonster

there is a way to convert.

but it's probably easier to copy everything off it and format it

To convert a volume to NTFS from the command prompt

1. Open Command Prompt. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
2. In the command prompt window, type: convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs

For example, typing convert /fs:ntfs would format drive with the ntfs format. You can convert FAT or FAT32 volumes to NTFS with this command.


from
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456984.aspx

sceptre

feylya wrote: »

You need to reformat and you will loose everything you have on the drive.

Pfft, no he won't.

*throws cow at feylya*

ronkmonster wrote: »

there is a way to convert.

but it's probably easier to copy everything off it and format it

To convert a volume to NTFS from the command prompt

1. Open Command Prompt. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
2. In the command prompt window, type: convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs

For example, typing convert /fs:ntfs would format drive with the ntfs format. You can convert FAT or FAT32 volumes to NTFS with this command.

That's the one. Now, obviously it's always best to back everything up before doing something as significant as this (if the conversion fails or if you have a power failure during the thing, you could lose everything on the drive). For what it's worth, I've done this quite a few times and never had any issues whatever. That's not to say that you won't but I've managed to get away with it so far.

It'll take a bit of a while to do it if you've got ~300GB on it already but personally I'd just do it and pray. Disclaimer: my fake god may be better at protecting hard drives than yours.

feylya

Ha, I had completely forgotten about the NTFS converter. Well, now I feel foolish

tara1999

Cheers guys. How do I open Command Prompt? I have windows Vista.

I figured it out, but when I go to convert I get this message : Acces Denied. You do not have sufficient privelages.You have to invoke this utility using an elevated mode. ????

ethernet

tara1999 wrote: »

Cheers guys. How do I open Command Prompt? I have windows Vista.

I figured it out, but when I go to convert I get this message : Acces Denied. You do not have sufficient privelages.You have to invoke this utility using an elevated mode. ????

Click on Start (Vista orb), type 'command prompt' in the search box. Now, instead of clicking on the program link or pressing enter, right click on it and choose to run as administrator. You'll get a UAC prompt -- click continue. Now it should work.

tara1999

Its now asking me to " Enter current volume label for drive I ". What do I type?

MunsterCycling

Its asking what name you want the volume to have after the format. You can just hit Enter if you don't want to bother naming it now.

MC

tara1999

Sorry for wreckin ye're heads lads, but I'm getting an error when I try it. I've attached the screen I'm getting.

MunsterCycling

TBH If you have all the files on the drive backed up elsewhere I'd just go with a reformat and restore the files back to the drive afterwards.

MC

tara1999

The thing is MC is that I dont have them backed up anywhere else and dont have the capacity on my laptop to copy over all the files so i have to get this working.

Come on guys help me out here!!

tara1999

Can anyone help me guys?

Wossack

tara1999 wrote: »

Can anyone help me guys?

Ill preface this by saying Ive never used the convert tool before, so only guessing from the error returned..

But it looks like it uses the internal disk(s) to do the converting of the external drive, and those internal disk(s) dont have enough space.. can I ask what the free space is on your internal drives? If you empty your recycle bin, or delete your temp directory, does the figure the error return change?

/edit oh, and dont save anything mega important to the external drive once all sorted, as those mybooks are pretty infamous for failures unfortunately. Mine almost lasted a year

tara1999

Hi Wossak,

I have only 13gb of free space left on my internal HD.

Voodu Child

You should never rely on a single drive as the sole location of important data, HDDs can and do fail all the time, just browse though the threads here to see how often it comes up. Especially external ones that might be more likely to get a few knocks etc.

So if you havent got a backup of everything on there, you should do so asap, buy another drive if needs be.

Converting to ntfs should be relatively straightforward, there will be step by step guides on the internet that explain each step with illustrations/screengrabs.

Its now asking me to " Enter current volume label for drive I ". What do I type?

Type the drive label (ie the letter, C, D, etc) of the drive you are converting. So if the drive is D, type d.

memeyouyou

SwissKnife is a great format/convert tool.

Wossack

tara1999 wrote: »

Hi Wossak,

I have only 13gb of free space left on my internal HD.

I'd try moving ~150mb of stuff off the external disk onto the internal one and trying again

tara1999

Thanks for the replys guys. I managed to get a loan of a 500gb hard drive and transferred all my stuff over to that whilst I changed the format of my own one and then put it all back on. I have another question if you wouldn't mind. As ye know i have a WD 1TB Hard drive. I also have a WD TV media player which I bought on the recomendation of guys on this site. My question is when I turn off my WD TV via the remote the hard drive stays powered up. I read on a few forums that this hard drive turns itself off after 10 mins automatically but mine isn't doing so. Is there a change I can make or am I wasting my time with this?

Voodu Child

There is a new (pre-release) firmware for the WD HD player that spins the drive down when you turn it off. It also has a bunch of great other features including much better support of thumbnails for the videos. See the HTPC & Media centre forum for more details. See if that gives you any improvement. (you might want to wait for the final version before upgrading)

Personally I unplug the WD player if it's not going to be used for an extended period (it runs quite warm otherwise), and while I don't use a powered drive, i'd be unplugging that also if I did.