External Hrd drive Q

-=al=-

I got a new 250gb USB external portable HD the other day mainly to back up improtant files and folders on my current machine, but do i have to format it beforehand?


also whats the deal with adding partitions on it, is it recommended i partition it into different formats?

Ive about 100GB of data on my current 160gb HDD in this Pc running XP so i was thinking just dragging everything over to it and having a partition a of 150gb for it then the rest can be for whatever i need it for in future

Just a new HD figure id set it up properly before i get going with it!

Biggins

If your external is of FAT32 format, it probably won't accept very large files that are over 2 gig in size to be saved on it.
(If they are smaller than that, obviously this won't be an issue then)
These would probably be Rar files and/or video files etc.
If you come across this problem, it means that you will have to format your drive or at least part of it, into a NTFS format to allow larger size individual files to be transferable across.

RolandIRL

if it's FAT32, there's a file size limit of 4GB (not 2GB, Biggins). if you format it to NTFS, this limit is removed.

partitioning doesn't really matter unless you want each partition to be a different file system ie one FAT32, another NTFS etc, though unless you're working on older machines (pre-windows 2000, i think), it's better to go with NTFS.

Biggins

whiteman19 wrote: »

if it's FAT32, there's a file size limit of 4GB (not 2GB, Biggins)...

Cheers, knew it was one or the other - and that someone would correct me into the right direction.

...And I agree about the NTFS. Besides being more able to take the larger sizes, its also more stable against possible file errors as a hard-drive file structure.

RolandIRL

Biggins wrote: »

Cheers, knew it was one or the other - and that someone would correct me into the right direction.

tut tut *shakes head* :P

just to add, there might be software on the hard drive that manufacturer's put there to back up etc. sometimes it can be annoying. might be worth formatting it to get rid of it. i've never needed it, preferring to back stuff up myself with my own system of doing things

Voodu Child

-=al=- wrote: »

I got a new 250gb USB external portable HD the other day mainly to back up improtant files and folders on my current machine, but do i have to format it beforehand?


also whats the deal with adding partitions on it, is it recommended i partition it into different formats?

Ive about 100GB of data on my current 160gb HDD in this Pc running XP so i was thinking just dragging everything over to it and having a partition a of 150gb for it then the rest can be for whatever i need it for in future

Just a new HD figure id set it up properly before i get going with it!

I don't seen any reason why you would want to partition it. If it is just being used for external backups.

If you do a full reformat, that includes checking every sector of the drive for errors, and it'll mark any ones with errors as unusable. It stops you writing data to bad parts of the disk.

Some people will say that is uneccessary for a brand new drive, but it certainly wont do any harm. A full disk check achieves the same.

RolandIRL

btw, if you're using the drive with the xbox 360, it needs to be formatted as FAT32. i see that you posted in the RROD thread, and just thought i'd let you know. really weird that the xbox doesn't support NTFS, given that it's all microsoft.
you could have a small partition with FAT32 and the rest NTFS, if you really need to put files over 4GB on it.

-=al=-

wow quick replies, thx, so its better to just format it before hand, i believe there is a backup program on the HD already, i might give it a try, but i dont usually like the type of software added on either! simple drag and drop always seemed to be ok, but ill probably install the software then format it if i need too

it's not really for the xbox its jut to backup files and take large music sessions on the go if i need to, + ive a 4gb sandisk usb for general small storage of things for the xbox

It said its windows ready on the box so i figure its just set up for ntfs


also i was formating a usb to fat32 on vista, but it said it would not be compatable with older windows OS's so i just formated it to FAT instead and there was no issues, is FAT32 better than FAT and fully backward compatable (i only know pretty simple stuff about all this jazz)

So what i was thinkin was just 200GB for normal windows ntfs so it more than covers my current machine and laptop then the other 50gb in FAT for general stuff... all these file formats are compatable with macs too right?

bluferbl

Bear in mind if you move your files over to the new disk you won't actually have a backup...since all of the files will only be in one location again. Hope that's not too obvious! In my experience, if a disk is going to fail it will do it pretty quickly or else it will last for years. It'd be a sickener to move your files to a new disk and then have it fail!

RolandIRL

bluferbl wrote: »

Bear in mind if you move your files over to the new disk you won't actually have a backup...since all of the files will only be in one location again. Hope that's not too obvious! In my experience, if a disk is going to fail it will do it pretty quickly or else it will last for years. It'd be a sickener to move your files to a new disk and then have it fail!

+1, just make sure that you don't move it around at all when it's plugged it. that's a major killer for hard drives (if it's not a ssd) and make sure that it's placed so it won't fall. there's a load of threads here where people have dropped drives and it's stopped working.
also back up important files like photos etc (ie files you can't replace or get again) with online storage like Dropbox. there's a referral thread somewhere here where for each referral link, you get an extra 250MB in addition to the 2GB you get when you sign up.

FAT32 is a later file system that FAT (which i think is FAT16) and it's compatible back to win95. it will definitely work in win2000 and XP.
FAT32 and NTFS is compatible with macs according to wiki (i've no mac so i can't test it)

Windows Ready doesn't mean it's NTFS. most external hard drives come formatted as FAT32. this isn't a problem unless you have files over 4GB

ED E

whiteman19 wrote: »

... back up important files like photos etc (ie files you can't replace or get again) with online storage like Dropbox. there's a referral thread somewhere here where for each referral link, you get an extra 250MB in addition to the 2GB you get when you sign up.

*Cough*



https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTg3MzI0NTg5


And +1 again on the movement thing. Happens oh so often. Also, never keep important data on USB keys, they are designed for transfers only.