external hardrive issues

psYChowIt · Post by **psYChowIt** » 07 Jul 2008, 22:50

Hi, I recently bought a 750 gig external hard drive and it's worked fine until now. However it is giving me an issue which is generally just a pain in the @$$.
I have about 500 gigs or so of free space on it but when I select, let say, folder X that is 6gigs and copy it to the drive it says destination drive full and then it gives me the disk cleanup wizard...

Help?

Ike · Post by **Ike** » 07 Jul 2008, 23:07

did you run scandisk on it?

psYChowIt · Post by **psYChowIt** » 07 Jul 2008, 23:12

scandisk?

Edit: Busy googling it

Ike · Post by **Ike** » 08 Jul 2008, 03:09

ahem, go into your "my computer" right click on the drive letter -> properties - on the tab's go to tools -> error checking -> click check now.

This is for xp... btw

rustypup · Post by **rustypup** » 08 Jul 2008, 07:20

drive formatted as fat32 or NTFS?

FAT32 will handle transfers below 4GB... anything more and you're probably going to get griped at...

external as in USB? many of the pre-packaged drives have a file transfer limit of around 700MB in a single op... they don't make this very clear, but the reasoning behind this is supposedly heat build-up. i feel it is more likely related to el-cheapo PCB units which cannot cache anything beyond this....
[size=0]but, but, but[/size]

psYChowIt · Post by **psYChowIt** » 08 Jul 2008, 09:45

Hmmm, that makes sense but how am I gonna get a 6gig image onto it? Or am I just royally screwed? Thanx Rusty, yup it's a usb hdd

rustypup · Post by **rustypup** » 08 Jul 2008, 09:58

psYChowIt wrote:how am I gonna get a 6gig image onto it?

if you're feeling cavalier, tear the bay open and plug the drive into your mobo and initiate the transfer without the USB bottleneck, (be sure to check the interface... if it's IDE, your problem remains if all you have is sata...)

if not... you'd probably have to figure out how to break the image into 640MB parts and reassemble them on the drive once the transfers have gone through...

option 1 would be my bet, but you can toss any warranty out the window....

Post by **Ron2K** » 08 Jul 2008, 10:47

If the drive is indeed FAT32, it can be converted to NTFS without any loss of data.

You need to open up a command prompt and type the following command in (assuming that your external HDD is drive Z:):

Code: Select all

convert z: /fs:ntfs

Keep in mind that the conversion is one-way; the only way to go back to FAT32 from NTFS is to reformat the drive.

See this Microsoft knowledge base article for more info.

psYChowIt · Post by **psYChowIt** » 08 Jul 2008, 10:51

thanks ron2k... I'll give it a shot... any reason why anybody would then prefer FAT32 compared to NTFS?

Post by **Ron2K** » 08 Jul 2008, 10:56

psYChowIt wrote:any reason why anybody would then prefer FAT32 compared to NTFS?

Operating system cross-compatibility. Just about every operating system can read FAT32. With NTFS, it's a different story - the Linux guys generally have to compile NTFS support into their kernel (not a very pleasant process, particularly if something goes wrong), and I think that the Mac guys are screwed no matter what.

psYChowIt · Post by **psYChowIt** » 08 Jul 2008, 11:30

Ok but if I'm only going to use my hard drive with xp and vista systems it'll be fine?

rustypup · Post by **rustypup** » 08 Jul 2008, 12:24

correct...

NTFS is far superior to FAT32 with respect to cluster usage, index speed, fragmentation management, etc, etc.

this will still not resolve your issue if the USB interface on the external housing throttles the drive usage...

i have a number of external drives, most of which are the genuine macgee slapped into an external housing - no limits on transfer size or time...

2 of them, however, are the pre-packed type and both come to crashing halts at <700MB... (disk full, delayed write op failed, etc, etc, etc..) which led to the discovery that these manufacturers acknowledge the poor ambient heat dispersal problems in their units by throttling the transfers....

po10cy · Post by **po10cy** » 08 Jul 2008, 12:28

ive ran into this problem before aswell, its annoying, formatting fully fixed it for me....im actually thinking it could be a spyware issue...have you done scans for spyware?

psYChowIt · Post by **psYChowIt** » 08 Jul 2008, 16:55

yup scanned my entire pc and then just the drive... nothing came up... Final question: you guys are 100% sure that converting (reformatting) from FAT32 to NTFS won't cause any loss of data?

Soz I'm a real n00b

Bladerunner · Post by **Bladerunner** » 08 Jul 2008, 17:09

psYChowIt wrote:yup scanned my entire pc and then just the drive... nothing came up... Final question: you guys are 100% sure that converting (reformatting) from FAT32 to NTFS won't cause any loss of data? Soz I'm a real n00b

Start -> Run -> CMD -> type what Ron2K said.

(EDIT: If you do it this way, you won't lose data)

fourtyseven · Post by **fourtyseven** » 08 Jul 2008, 21:02

if converting from FAT to NTFS, there will definately be no data loss at all

DeathStrike · Post by **DeathStrike** » 08 Jul 2008, 21:30

hi guys. a quick question. sowi 4 highjack.

I have a external 2.5" HDD. and i bought a casing 4 it and now use it as portable. now i have a problem where after i copy files onto it. (can copy any size.) but when i try to copy off the HDD then after a certain size then it might stop coping and the drive reads continuously. then it pops up a message bout cyclic redundence error or sumthing. is there anyway to fix this?

psYChowIt · Post by **psYChowIt** » 08 Jul 2008, 21:58

Bladerunner wrote: Start -> Run -> CMD -> type what Ron2K said.

Say what?

Bladerunner · Post by **Bladerunner** » 08 Jul 2008, 22:02

DeathStrike wrote:hi guys. a quick question. sowi 4 highjack.

I have a external 2.5" HDD. and i bought a casing 4 it and now use it as portable. now i have a problem where after i copy files onto it. (can copy any size.) but when i try to copy off the HDD then after a certain size then it might stop coping and the drive reads continuously. then it pops up a message bout cyclic redundence error or sumthing. is there anyway to fix this?

I think this means your drive is gonna crap. Backup a.s.a.p.

Bladerunner · Post by **Bladerunner** » 08 Jul 2008, 22:09

psYChowIt wrote:
Bladerunner wrote: Start -> Run -> CMD -> type what Ron2K said.
Say what?

1. CLICK Start-Menu

2. CLICK Run

3. TYPE cmd

4. HIT Enter

When the black window with text pops up:

5. TYPE convert z: /fs:ntfs

(Assuming z: is the drive you wish to convert. In reality could probably be d: or e: )

Post by **Ron2K** » 08 Jul 2008, 22:09

Bladerunner wrote:
DeathStrike wrote:hi guys. a quick question. sowi 4 highjack.

I have a external 2.5" HDD. and i bought a casing 4 it and now use it as portable. now i have a problem where after i copy files onto it. (can copy any size.) but when i try to copy off the HDD then after a certain size then it might stop coping and the drive reads continuously. then it pops up a message bout cyclic redundence error or sumthing. is there anyway to fix this?
I think this means your drive is gonna crap. Backup a.s.a.p.

I don't think this, I know this.

The last HDD that did this to me failed a few days later. I had bought a replacement, but not before I had backed everything up. I was able to recover most of what was on that drive though before it totally died.

Just out of curiosity, how old is the HDD in question?

DeathStrike · Post by **DeathStrike** » 08 Jul 2008, 22:17

um. well my dad got it at his work. they guy said it was brand new..... only had it 4 a few months. problem is it didn't cum in box. now do we got reciept for it. on the plus side we got it 4 free

psYChowIt · Post by **psYChowIt** » 08 Jul 2008, 22:21

Bladerunner wrote:
psYChowIt wrote:
Bladerunner wrote: Start -> Run -> CMD -> type what Ron2K said.
Say what?
1. CLICK Start-Menu

2. CLICK Run

3. TYPE cmd

4. HIT Enter

When the black window with text pops up:

5. TYPE convert z: /fs:ntfs

(Assuming z: is the drive you wish to convert. In reality could probably be d: or e: )

Soz and thanks

EDIT: It then asks me to enter the current volume label for drive E (my drive is E: btw)

fourtyseven · Post by **fourtyseven** » 08 Jul 2008, 23:14

DeathStrike wrote:hi guys. a quick question. sowi 4 highjack.

I have a external 2.5" HDD. and i bought a casing 4 it and now use it as portable. now i have a problem where after i copy files onto it. (can copy any size.) but when i try to copy off the HDD then after a certain size then it might stop coping and the drive reads continuously. then it pops up a message bout cyclic redundence error or sumthing. is there anyway to fix this?

I think that backups should be foremost on your mind right now; I'd get all those precious files onto another storage medium asap.
It doesnt really matter how old an hdd is; the rule of thumb i believe is that hdd's WILL crash at some point - its just a question of when.

Out of interest, once you've backed up your files, format the entire drive and see if you can replicate your current problems. Although I wouldnt trust your hdd, it would be an interesting excersise!

Good luck!

Bladerunner · Post by **Bladerunner** » 09 Jul 2008, 13:20

psYChowIt wrote:
Bladerunner wrote:
psYChowIt wrote:
Bladerunner wrote: Start -> Run -> CMD -> type what Ron2K said.
Say what?
1. CLICK Start-Menu

2. CLICK Run

3. TYPE cmd

4. HIT Enter

When the black window with text pops up:

5. TYPE convert z: /fs:ntfs

(Assuming z: is the drive you wish to convert. In reality could probably be d: or e: )
Soz and thanks
EDIT: It then asks me to enter the current volume label for drive E (my drive is E: btw)

That's just a name. You can leave it empty, and it'll show as "Local Disk (E: )" in Explorer. Or you can give it a name. If you type MUSIC, it'll be shown as "MUSIC (E: )" in Explorer.