Problem copying file to External Hard Dirve

What type of interface does the external driver use?

Is the drive a firewire drive? If so, there are sometimes problems writing very large files - there is a Microsoft Knowledge base article about this, which I can't find at the moment - sorry!

I had similar problems writing very large files to an external firewire drive. USB interface worked fine. I solved my problems (and some other problems with firewire 800 support) by installing unibrain firewire driver stack, which is much faster and les buggy than the awful Microsoft firewire drivers.

If USB drive, you may want to research other USB issues with XP, SP2 - there are several patches and hotfixes out there...

No its a USB 2 drive. But I'll check the web for such issues.

I think your problem may be FAT32 file system on the external drive, which is limited to file size of 4gb max. I had overlooked this info in your earlier post. I'll be that if you try copying a file smaller than 4gb it will work....

Convert the file system to NFTS. Error check first.

If you have a power outage half way through you wil be spending a lot of time pulling the files off the drive with somethign like Get Data Back.

Backup anything extreemly important in-case something goes wrong.

Positive, FAT 32 file system will not allow for larger than 4 Gigs a file for transfering. I know this because I bought a LaCie Silverscreen 40G not so long a go and it was formatted in FAT 32 and I could'nt bring DVD images onto the drive unless I Formatted it to NTFS. So if you format it to NTFS you should be able to move about anything (filesize) onto it.

Hope it helps