Hi there All,
Today we had a lot f callers in - thanks to all of picked up the phone and asked a question!
During the show, (Danny I think ??) we had a a caller who asked about a problem with copy & pasting large files from his windows hard drive to an external drive. I mentioned that there were a few issues with this, and that I would answer in more detail in the forums, as we were running out of time... so here it is!
Now keep in mind that I can't actually see your computer, and that I am giving this advice based on a 30 second summary of your problem. What I suspect is the issue is that your external drive (you mentioned had 1Tb of space) is running a file system that won't allow large files. Let me explain.
The file system is basically the underlying structure of how a hard drive organises the data that is placed on it. Think of it as a grid layout, that has addresses for various blocks of data which then allows your computer to logically store and retrieve the information. Now, there have been various "standards" for this layout - and one of the problems is that technology improves so fast, that some new features may not be supported with an older standard. File size is one of them. There is a very common standard for portable drives called FAT32. This is so common because it is the most widely supported file structure - allowing the drive to be plugged in to a variety of operating systems and devices. BUT - the good bit about FAT32 is that it's old (hence it is widely supported) - and the bad bit is that it is old. When it was made up - large files and drives didn't even exist! So, there is a maximum limit to the size of file that can be transfered - which is about 4Gb. Many people never even notice this, as most files are definitely smaller than this - but if you are trying to copy large files and your computer comes up with a message that goes something like "not enough room on destination" or "file size too large" - then you might be running afoul of this problem.
Thankfully - it is relatively easy to work around. Basically there are newer file systems that support large files and drives, and you can convert your existing drive to this system without any loss of information. I won't go into the process here - it is well covered on the
www.cknow.com website.
Please note - while this should be a straightforward and easy process, as always if your data is priceless then you should work with a backup, or at the very least get the advice of a good geek in your area to help.
Thanks again for listening - see you all in two weeks! (after the AC/DC concert in Perth!)
:)RG
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