Trouble with a FAT 32 Iomega hard drive

I'm a novice with computers. I just bought an Iomega 500GB external hard drive FAT 32 to store movies I have on my NTSC hard drive in my desktop. However when I try to copy even one movie to the new drive, I get a pop up meessage that there is not enough disk space on the new drive.

I don't undewrstand why this is. It's very frustrating. Anyone know the reason for this?

Thanks for any help.

Originally Posted by gom

I'm a novice with computers. I just bought an Iomega 500GB external hard drive FAT 32 to store movies I have on my NTSC hard drive in my desktop. However when I try to copy even one movie to the new drive, I get a pop up meessage that there is not enough disk space on the new drive.

I don't undewrstand why this is. It's very frustrating. Anyone know the reason for this?

Thanks for any help.

FAT32 is the old Win98 HDD format and has a maximum of 4.1GB per file.

Your profile says you are running XP, so it is better to reformat as NTFS for a number of reasons. The only downside is the drive will be invisible to Win98 (or earlier) and Linux may see it but may not write to it.

Ah so.... no wonder the drive was so cheap price wise. Thank you so much for clearing that up!

But, how do I reformat? The drive came with no software.

Also, does the reformating affect the storage capacity? Will it not be a 500 GB anymore?

Thanks again.

If the drive shows in 'My Computer', right click on it and see if 'Format' is on the displayed list. If it gives you a option of NTFS, you can format it there.

But you can also convert it to NTFS without formating: http://www.ntfs.com/quest3.htm I would rather reformat as it cleans out old stuff. But if it's a new drive with nothing on it, the conversion method is very fast. Reformatting a 500GB drive will take a long, long time.

The size will remain the same, NTFS or FAT32. It's not unusual that a external drive is formated in FAT32. It just makes them more compatible with more systems. But it does have that 4GB barrier.

A 500GB drive with show as somewhat smaller than that, no matter what system or format you use. Probably 470GB or so.

And this thread is probably more suited to our computer forum. Moving You.

BTW you do not have a NTSC drive in your computer, NTSC is a video format. You most likely have a NTFS drive.

Since it is a new drive you could most liekly just open my Computer, right click on the external drive letter, choose format, choose NTFS and click the quick format box. I wouldn't do that with a old drive but it should be OK for a new drive.

My extrenal 400GB drives shows up as 372GB, so a 500GB drive would show up as (if my calculation is correct) 465GB.