[NotEvsie]

Hi all,

I bought a Western Digital 1TB, Elements Desktop external hard drive. Transferred just shy of 600Gb of music onto it when I first got it, and then pretty much left it alone - played some music off it, but other than that haven't touched it.

Now I can't transfer anything on to it at all, it tells me that the drive is full, despite there being 404 GB of free space.

I have run chkdsk on it (no errors). Checked for fragmentation (perfect). Uninstalled and re-installed the drivers (pointless). Unmounted and re-mounted (running out of ideas).

I downloaded WinDirSat which just shows me that everything is working fine.

It is, for some reason I don't fully understand, set up in FAT32, not NTFS - I have tried using CONVERT H: /fs:ntfs in command prompt to change that - but it hasn't worked, and I have no idea why, or even if that would fix the problem.

Frankly, I am out of ideas and at the end of my tether, I do a lot of video editing, so space is at a premium on my system - that 404GB would be really useful to get back, so if anyone can help me with this problem I would be eternally grateful.

[Jordster]

FAT32 Only allows files to be transfered that are under 4GB. Try copying a small file if you havn't already.

To get it to NTFS, you will need to do a backup of it. When you have done that, go to the following location (Disk Management)

Start > Computer (Right Click) > Manage > Disk Management

Find your hard drive, You will be able to recognize it by the size of the drive and by the drive letter. Right click it and you want to delete volume. This will delete ALL data that is currently on the drive, be sure to BACKUP. Once it has done that, right click it again, and make a new volume. Make sure the volume size is as large as possible, and make sure to format it as NTFS. When done, you can put all your files back onto it.

[valis]

just an fyi, you'll find most transportable drives set up as fat32. I've got a Seagate 1 tb external, also FAT32. Asked the same question, actually. Reasoning behind it is that FAT32 is more accessible to a wider range of legacy apps, or some stuff like that.

Whatever, it works for me.

Obviously losing 400 gigs of free space is odd. How old is the drive?

And when you say that WinDirStat show 'everything fine', are you saying it shows 400 gigs free, or it correlates with what windows is telling you?

thanks,

v

[NotEvsie]

It's a month old - so if I can't sort this, it's going back to ebuyer. I have 2 seagate 500gb externals, in NTFS (I think I was given an option when installing them, but it was a while ago now)

I phoned WD tech support, and they recommended I back it up, and format it to NTFS. I do a lot of video editing, so I am often working with files over 4gb, which FAT32 doesn't like very much.

Now I just need to find 600GB elsewhere on the system to put the music...

Oh, and it was confirming what computer explorer was telling me, and finding no errors on any of the drive checks (which are just the windows ones via another route..) - The free space tallies with what's on there now in both.

[valis]

my best suggestion would be to make sure you are viewing hidden folders and files in explorer, and then go poking about.

Let me ask you this; you say you do a lot of video editing; have you deleted a large amount of stuff on this drive? If you dumped some video stuff, it's going to be stuck in the c:\recycler folder even after you've emptied the recycle bin.

other than that, you can run an app like ATF, but I guarantee you you don't have 400 gigs of kludge on that drive.

[parasolution]

A little off topic, but it would make good practice.

Instead of searching for free space on your system to move the 600GB of music, I would suggest just buying another drive in order to store a back-up of the music. From the sound of it, you don't have a back-up; that's a lot of music to loose if the drive were to ever fail.

You can get an internal 1TB drive for around $80. Staples and Fry.com had a 1TB external going for $99. I have 130GB of music that backed up twice. It's saved my butt a couple of times with drive failures.

[crjdriver]

Originally Posted by parasolution

A little off topic, but it would make good practice.

Instead of searching for free space on your system to move the 600GB of music, I would suggest just buying another drive in order to store a back-up of the music. From the sound of it, you don't have a back-up; that's a lot of music to loose if the drive were to ever fail.

You can get an internal 1TB drive for around $80. Staples and Fry.com had a 1TB external going for $99. I have 130GB of music that backed up twice. It's saved my butt a couple of times with drive failures.

Very good advise. With the price of drives so cheap, there is no excuse for a lack of backup.

Remember data you do not have at least two copies of is data you do not care about.

[NotEvsie]

@ valis - I checked it just in case, but I literally haven't done a thing with this drive since transferring the stuff over, it's purely music on there.

@ parasolution and crjdriver - I have no more internal bays to spare, the cheapest 1tb external (from a brand I trust) is around £70 ($130 USD) to back up everything would cost me £210... which I just can't afford. Most of my music is on CD anyway, so it's not the end of the world if it dies (just a pain in the backside re-ripping it all) and the really important stuff, photos of my daughter, and a few work-related things, are backed up to DVDs.

Clearing out the space is actually proving to be quite useful in so much as it's forcing me to finally backup some things on disc I should have done ages ago to free the space - so I guess there's a silver lining to it.

Now just have to hope changing the file system is the answer to the problem when I'm done!!!

I can't thank you fine people enough for your help and advice.

[parasolution]

You don't even need an extra drive bay. Just get a SATA to USB cable, they run around $10-15. That has saved me several times. Just connect the drive when you need to back up, when you're done, put the internal drive back int he box. The first time I lost my music due to a drive failure, it was not fun ripping everything again, especially the size of you music. If thats 600GB in MP3's, that's a lot of ripping. Even if its lossless files, that's still a lot of ripping to do again.

As I used to tell my employees who made mistakes that were avoidable....you don't have the time to do things right, but you have the time to do it twice.

I do understand the money issue, but I would make it a priority to get another drive.

[valis]

Originally Posted by parasolution

As I used to tell my employees who made mistakes that were avoidable....you don't have the time to do things right, but you have the time to do it twice.

I do understand the money issue, but I would make it a priority to get another drive.

I like the quote. I tell my clients data that isn't backed up is data you don't need or want.

As I mentioned, I have the 1 tb SATA drive; that's external. I synch it with my home system every Sunday night, then bring it to work and lock it up in my desk.

Reckon if the house blows up, I got a mirror here. Work blows up, I got a mirror there.

Both blow up, I really ain't going to care anyhow.


What's that phrase? The pres and the v.p. never fly together.