Error msg: Insufficient disk space when space is not insufficient

[Gosto]

My secondary hard drive is a 250G Maxtor on an XP system. It works fine unless I try to copy a file over 4G to it. It has 50G left on it, but I get an insufficient space error message. I have the CD for it. How can I fix this without reformatting? Thanks - Gosto

[chad5414]

make sure its formatted to ntfs instead of fat32

[GX44]

I was going to ask what file system is used on it but the fact you have used it prior to this suggests its the same although, can't hurt to ask.... is it a FAT file system or NTFS on your primary & secondary?

[GX44]

make sure its formatted to ntfs instead of fat32

Thats what I was getting at... beat me to it

[chad5414]

You can use what you choose on your primary bieng your Master or  Windows Drive but for storing files over 4gb i would back up what i had, go into my computer right click and format using ntfs...or simply boot from your xp disc and do the same. Make sense?

[contrex]

Nobody has yet explained to the poor b*gger that a limitation of the FAT32 file system is that a file of over 4 GB in size is impossible, so he'll get an insufficient free space message even if there is 3 Terabytes free on that disk.

There is a convert-to-ntfs tool available in XP called Convert which can convert a drive with data on it, although a backup is probably a good idea.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881/EN-US/


 

[Gosto]

Thanks for the help. I'll get an external drive to backup with, then go to ntfs.