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View Full Version : ** File Transfer Question **

Puter Padowan
12-16-2007, 10:57 PM
Regarding Windows XP SP2 and Vista are you able to transfer files in the size of 29 gigs or 60 gigs?

We had a customer who does heavy video editing trying to transfer files from her pata internal hdd to an external fire wire drive. She could open and edit the file on her pc no problem so it didn't seem like the file was damaged for corrupt nor did we get a message implicating such. It was just a generic message saying "Windows was unable to transfer xyz" or something along those lines.

I obviously don't have much experience with video editing. As always thanks in advance.
jlreich
12-16-2007, 11:27 PM
Sounds like the external drive file system is FATA32 which has a 4GB file size limit. Many external drives come formated with FAT32 because it is accessible by many OS's.
Paul Komski
12-17-2007, 03:51 AM
The 4GB FAT32 maximum may even be only 2GB with some operating systems. Both drives need to be formatted as NTFS to allow for such file transfers to succeed under Windows. You can easily do this from MyComputer in any NT-based operating system such as WinXP, which you must have on the PC since it handles those large files OK.
Erik
12-18-2007, 10:55 PM
I just transferred about a 200GB file from my server's external array to by PC to backup before I expanded the array. So as long as you are using NTFS there is no real file size limit.
Puter Padowan
01-01-2008, 10:28 AM
Haven't been on for a while. Thank you all for the answer! So simple... feel like an idiot. Just had the customer reformat to NTFS and all worked.
Erik
01-01-2008, 03:30 PM
Haven't been on for a while. Thank you all for the answer! So simple... feel like an idiot. Just had the customer reformat to NTFS and all worked.

You can also do this without formatting, but can only be done from FAT to NTFS.

convert c: /FS:NTFS

Just enter whatever drive letter you want to convert.
Puter Padowan
01-01-2008, 08:11 PM
You can also do this without formatting, but can only be done from FAT to NTFS.

convert c: /FS:NTFS

Just enter whatever drive letter you want to convert.

Erik

Will this method retain the data on the drive? Since you're not formatting?
Ajmukon
01-01-2008, 08:49 PM
Erik

Will this method retain the data on the drive? Since you're not formatting?

yes it will.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881
jlreich
01-01-2008, 10:37 PM
Keeping in mind there is a possibility, however small, of corrupted data with any such file system maneuvers.

Also you don't want to do it with a partition that is overly full or too fragmented.