backup over 4gb in fat32

nipsterpooh · January 19th, 2004, 05:19 PM

I have an external maxtor drive (40gb) formatted in fat 32 that I have been using to backup my internal hd. Problem is that in fat 32 I can't backup more than 4gb due to size limitations within the fat32 system. I don't want to switch over to ntfs now- will likely use ntfs when I get another computer soon. I use the backup program within win2k & have read that you can schedule multiple tasks to be able to backup more than 4gb but it doesn't work for me. Once the external drive reaches 4gb, it can't take any more. How do I work around this?

**EvilRick** · January 19th, 2004, 05:24 PM

You should only have a problem if you're trying to copy a single file that is over 4GB in size. If you want to continue backing up the way you are now and any of your files are >4GB, then you're going to have to convert your 40GB HDD to NTFS.

nipsterpooh · January 19th, 2004, 05:28 PM

I guess since my hd has just the one partition for the c drive then it is seeing it as one big file bigger than 4gb? If I do format the external drive to ntfs, how would I do a backup since my internal drive is formatted as fat32?

**EvilRick** · January 19th, 2004, 05:38 PM

No, it shouldn't see your partition as one big file. The backup program creates a file that, depending on what you're backing up, is copied over to your backup media. The more you're backing up the bigger the backup file. How big of a HDD are you trying to backup? More than likely, the backup file is larger than 4GB's and that's why it can't put it on the 40GB.

nipsterpooh · January 19th, 2004, 05:43 PM

ok, well here's what I did in backup-win2k program:

did a normal backup of certain files that were about 2gb total in size. Then I waited till that was completed & started another backup of certain files that totalled about 3.7gb in size. Once the external hd reached 4gb is when I got the message that the backup media was full.

Is there any way to work around this or am I just limited to backing up 4gb?