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| Thread ID: 125115 | 2012-06-07 06:04:00 | Backing up using an external hard Drive | smurf (6545) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1280280 | 2012-06-07 06:04:00 | I have an external hard drive (Western Digital) which I have been using on my old computer running Windows XP. Looking at the file system used by the drive it is FAT 32. I have bought a new machine running Windows 7 64 bit and the file system is NTFS. In order to use the external drive to continue to back up would I have to reformat the external drive from FAT 32 to NTFS or is this an automatic process. Excuse my ignorance for asking :) An answer would be much appreciated :) | smurf (6545) | ||
| 1280281 | 2012-06-07 08:03:00 | The only reason to re-format your external drive to NTFS is if you wish to save files of over 2Gb in size. If you re-format the drive you will lose all the data, so back it up first. It is possible to convert the Fat32 to NTFS, but there is a strong possibility that you will corrupt the data anyway, and you should still back it up. The Drive manager in W7 is good and will handle this well. | mzee (3324) | ||
| 1280282 | 2012-06-07 08:23:00 | Also, NTFS will save file metadata like owner and ACL permissions but Fat32 will not. That may not bother you in the slightest though ... :) |
fred_fish (15241) | ||
| 1280283 | 2012-06-07 09:06:00 | Thanks mzee and fred_fish for your replies. If I understand you, it is not critical to reformat the drive. I used Fbackup on the previous XP computer and want to use it on the Win 7 computer too. | smurf (6545) | ||
| 1280284 | 2012-06-07 09:19:00 | It will still just work unless as has been stated the individual files are bigger than 2GB | gary67 (56) | ||
| 1280285 | 2012-06-07 22:51:00 | Thanks Gary | smurf (6545) | ||
| 1280286 | 2012-06-07 23:17:00 | You dont need to format a drive to convert it to NTFS. Just open a command window and at the prompt type in CONVERT X: /FS:NTFS (X being the drive letter of the drive you want to convert). It needs extra space to perform this process though, so make sure you have plenty on your drive, also as a safety make sure you have your data backed up somewhere else in case something goes wrong. The whole process may take a while. | Iantech (16386) | ||
| 1280287 | 2012-06-08 00:58:00 | It all depends on how you are backing up : ie what program you are using to backup. Some backup programs can split the backup into 2G chunks . If you are using backup software that came on the original HD, then you may want to use something newer But in general, convert to NTFS regardless. A reformat is the best way, IF you dont mind the drive being wiped. |
1101 (13337) | ||
| 1280288 | 2012-06-08 01:04:00 | Thanks Iantech and 1101. Your replies are appreciated. Will be reformatting to NTFS :) | smurf (6545) | ||
| 1280289 | 2012-06-08 05:06:00 | Just use Syncback. Long file names or large files you might want to reformat it. |
pctek (84) | ||
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