Comments on: Hard drive claims it's full

Question: Hard drive claims it's full

backOfYourMind — Wed, 04 May 2005 23:29:58 -0800

I have a 250GB Maxtor external firewire hard drive. The drive has 190GB of space but when I try to copy a 12GB video onto it I get a "disc is full" message. What gives?

By: stovenator

stovenator — Wed, 04 May 2005 23:54:14 -0800

What operating system? What is the filesystem on the hard drive?

If you have an older BIOS, or are running Windows 2000 with FAT32, or an older operating system, you may be subject to a max file size of 2GB or 4 GB .

By: backOfYourMind

backOfYourMind — Thu, 05 May 2005 00:40:43 -0800

Sorry, should have mentioned - Windows XP SP1

By: grouse

grouse — Thu, 05 May 2005 02:18:59 -0800

Yes, but what is the filesystem?

By: filmgeek

filmgeek — Thu, 05 May 2005 03:14:02 -0800

Specifically BackofYourMind - Fat32 cannot handle files greater than 2gb in length.

You'd have to have the drive formatted at NTFS.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx

By: backOfYourMind

backOfYourMind — Thu, 05 May 2005 05:02:59 -0800

The filesystem is indeed FAT32!

Thanks everyone for your help.