Hi, On my internal hard disk I have a 12.6 GB file which I'm trying to copy to my external hard disk (which is connected to my PC via USB2). The external hard disk has about 215 GB od free space and having done a disk defragment analysis of the eternal disk this is amost entirely contigous free space. The problem is that windows won't let me perform the copy; it say's that there is not enough space on the external hard disk (when there is 17 times more!). I suspect that this is because windows can't handle copying files that are this large but that is only a guess. Does anyone have any ideas on the reason and any solutions? Cheers

If the file system on your external HD is FAT32, it won't copy. It has to be NTFS for files greater than 4GB. i_XpUser

you are absolutely right. I have just checked the external hard drive and it is fat32 while the internal one is ntfs. Now, is it possible for me to make the external hdd ntfs without losing the data? If not then do i just do a simple format specifying ntfs as the target file system or is there something else i need to do? Out of interest do you get difeerent amounts of available space with ntfs and fat32?

Yes it's possible to convert FAT32 to NTFS but there is absolutely no guarantee that your data files will remain intact. The best practice is to first burn everything to CD/DVD discs then format the external HD from the Disk manager. It will the easiest fix. i_XpUser

Out of interest do you get difeerent amounts of available space with ntfs and fat32? same as or closer to what you have now. You will be dealing with MFT instead of FAT tables. i_XpUser

Hi javastudent =================================================== Another way is to split the large file into, let me say, 3GB chunks, copy them to the external HD, put them all in one folder and join them there. I personally would not convert to NTFS but stick with FAT32. Google for HJSplit 2.2, it’s free. It can handle files larger than 10 GB and is easy to use. It has a split as well a join function. I use HJSplit for many years. Cheers de Peter

using ntfs on external hard drives will limit its usability to ntfs machines only (nt4, 2k, xp, 2k3 server and vista) to convert your disk to ntfs, open a command prompt and type: convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs i.e. you external disk is using the drive letter 'e:' then type: convert e: /fs:ntfs p.s.: i never experienced any loss of data when converting drives to ntfs, however, backing up important files is mandatory. Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.'