Not Enough Free Disk Space on External Hard drive - But There Is

LFC5Times · 30-10-2010 12:00AM #1

Hi,

I have a 4.7gb .mkv file on my house computer which I want to cut and paste to my WD external hard drive.

However I keep getting an error saying there is no free disk space, but there is, in fact there is 171gb of free space left.

The file system on my external hard drive is FAT32. So could it be something to do with this?

Any solutions?

Thanks in advance

aidan_walsh · 30-10-2010 12:01AM

FAT32 won't allow files larger than 4GB.

bhickey · 30-10-2010 12:12AM

aidan_walsh wrote: »

FAT32 won't allow files larger than 4GB.

Yep if you're using Windows and you want to copy files that big, you should reformat the drive as NTFS. Just be careful though that any other devices that might be reading the drive (e.g. DVD & media players) can read NTFS drives.

Biggins · 30-10-2010 01:27AM

100% agree with the above solutions given.

You have to copy ALL that is on your drive to another temp location - NOT on the external.
Then format the drive into the NTFS format. Then when completed, copy everything back onto it including your very large file (film in HD is it?).

Small note: if your doing the formatting using a laptop - plug in the laptop to a power source.
The last thing you want is while your formatting your drive, for the battery to accidentally run flat and possibly screw up the formatting process and subsequently, possibly your external drive.
So plug it in, just to be on the safe side till the job completes. Better safe than sorry.

Feelgood · 30-10-2010 01:37AM

No need to reformat, just do a conversion and the data will stay intact.

Find out whatever drive letter you hard drive is on, eg X: and then run the following from a command prompt

convert x: /fs:ntfs

RolandIRL · 30-10-2010 01:40AM

If converting from FAT to NTFS, windows 7 has a nifty feature that allows you to convert the drive without taking your stuff off - Instructions here

Warning: Although the chance of corruption or data loss during the conversion is minimal, it is recommended that you backup any data that you do not want to lose on the volume that you want to convert before you start the conversion to be extra safe.

I've done this myself on my WD Elements 1TB and it works perfectly. takes a while to do it (can't remember how long exactly) but certainly shorter than copying out all wanted files, formating, and transferring back files.

EDIT: damn you feelgood, beat me to it >.< but does that work on all windows OS's? thought it was only 7...?

Feelgood · 30-10-2010 01:55AM

whiteman19 wrote: »

EDIT: damn you feelgood, beat me to it >.< but does that work on all windows OS's? thought it was only 7...?

Think so dude, its been around since the days of NTFS anyways!. So most likely since WinNT!.

I used to run it quite a bit on XP. There is another tool that I used that allowed you to change the FAT32 file size limit to 32GB which worked grand too. Was a small dos prog you ran across the drive, didn't do a reformat or anything just changed the limit. Cant think of the name of it now though

RolandIRL · 30-10-2010 02:04AM

dunno where i heard that conversion only worked on win7. never heard of it on XP. you learn something new everyday, and that's my quota reached for today

Feelgood · 30-10-2010 02:12AM

Well I hate to say it, but I never hit these kinda problems anymore on my *COUGH COUGH* Linux pc....Are people still using Windows :eek:

Thats me all smugged up for the night

Not Enough Free Disk Space on External Hard drive - But There Is

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