Question on Western Digital External Hard drive

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Question on WD External Drive

Hi all,
I just bought a WD 250 External HD for backup purposes. I just read in the
documentation that it "is preformatted as a single FAT 32 partition for
compatibility with all Windows operating systems..."
My XP Pro system is formatted in NTFS. Is this going to create a problem
with an image of my system backed up on this external drive?
Thanks for any info
Gary

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

"msnews.microsoft.com" <boycefamily@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:upizMmeuFHA.3752@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>
> Question on WD External Drive
>
> Hi all,
> I just bought a WD 250 External HD for backup purposes. I just read in the
> documentation that it "is preformatted as a single FAT 32 partition for
> compatibility with all Windows operating systems..."
> My XP Pro system is formatted in NTFS. Is this going to create a problem
> with an image of my system backed up on this external drive?
> Thanks for any info
> Gary

Windows XP can utilize a FAT32 file system with no problem.

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

> "msnews.microsoft.com" <boycefamily@shaw.ca> wrote in message
> news:upizMmeuFHA.3752@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>> Hi all,
>> I just bought a WD 250 External HD for backup purposes. I just read in
>> the documentation that it "is preformatted as a single FAT 32 partition
>> for compatibility with all Windows operating systems..."
>> My XP Pro system is formatted in NTFS. Is this going to create a problem
>> with an image of my system backed up on this external drive?
>> Thanks for any info
>> Gary



>Jerry" <jhuffman@triad.rr.com> wrote in message It should NOT be a problem,
>once the HD is installed as the slave and recognized by xp, go to the disk
>mgr and reformat in NFFS.


Gary:
There is *no* need to re:format your USBEHD from FAT32 to NTFS. As Jerry &
NOG (in another posting) have indicated, XP will have no problem in
recognizing a FAT32 file system. And since you'll be using that EHD for
backup purposes there's no particular advantage of a NTFS files system over
a FAT32 in that situation.

One other thing -- you indicate you plan to use a disk imaging program to,
in effect, "clone" the contents of your system to the EHD. When you do that,
your EHD will contain the file system used by your source disk, in this case
the NTFS file system. So there's no need to re:format your EHD NTFS *prior*
to the disk imaging operation.
Anna

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

news:7kiji11pqp0k2rje3guvc4o3htqofvgn7d@4ax.com...
>>> I just bought a WD 250 External HD for backup purposes. I just read in
>>> the
>>> documentation that it "is preformatted as a single FAT 32 partition for
>>> compatibility with all Windows operating systems..."
>>> My XP Pro system is formatted in NTFS. Is this going to create a problem
>>> with an image of my system backed up on this external drive?
>>> Thanks for any info
>>> Gary


> "Nog" <nognog@adelphia.net> wrote:
>>Windows XP can utilize a FAT32 file system with no problem.


"Zilbandy" <zil@zilbandyREMOVETHIS.com> wrote in message
> I thought FAT32 had a file size limit of 4gb. If you are using it for
> backups and your backup image is larger that that, you've got a
> problem. My image backups are currently at 8gb and I have my external
> Maxtor 250gb formatted NTFS. If you really have a need for a FAT32
> partition, use something like PartitionMagic to create both an NTFS
> and FAT32 on the large drive.


Zilbandy:
The OP will be using a disk imaging program to "clone" the contents of his
XP OS (NTFS formatted) to a USB external HD presently formatted FAT32. When
he performs the cloning operation, the file system, in this case, NTFS, will
be cloned right along with the contents of his source disk. Thus, there is
no file size limit issue in this situation.
Anna
Anna

Files more that 4 GB cannot transfer on Hard disk / External Hard disk .

This is the general problem with the video editors , Well the problem is not so big as you are thinking . . . simply format the Hard drive HDD to NTFS format, don't use quick format in that case use full format , this will help you to solve your problem , but remember the HDD may not work with Apple / Mac machines.

Abhinav Bajpai
bajpaiabihnav@hotmail.com