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Windows XP Pro Back Up Question

15 years ago

I am trying to back up into an external Hard Disk that I just purchased (Western Digital My Book, Capacity 500GB). When I try to run Back Up (Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Backup) using Windows XP Pro, I tell the wizard to back up All Information On This Computer.

Well, Backup started and then.... ran out of space!?!?. When I went into Disk Defrag, it showed the HD in this Dell XPS Desktop PC has a capacity of 230GB and Free Space of 200GB.

Assuming Backup has to copy 30GB, why is it running out of space after 4GB more or less? I get the impression Windows cannot create a file of the size needed but I am not sure what is the problem. How do I get around this problem?

TIA,

Luis

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Comments (3)

luis_pr
Original Author
15 years ago
I left out the error message. Sorry.

"You have either run out of space, or the backup file (.bkf) is too large for this disk. Note: if this disk is formatted with FAT32, the maximum possible size for the backup file is limited to 4GB. The backup operation will stop."

Statistics from backup:

Files processed 32,367; Bytes processed: 4,267,399,501.
Files estimated: 125,131; Bytes estimated: 18,526,016,886
owbist
15 years ago
Luis it would appear that your hard drive is formatted in Fat32. As your error message notes, it can only create a backup up to 4 gigs making it useless for you.

To check your computer click Start, click My computer the RIGHT click on the C:\ drive and click Properties at the bottom of the new window. Now look near the top and you will see whether your drive is Fat32 or the more Efficient NTFS.

If your internal hard drive is either Maxtor or Seagate you can download free back up software from their site. This is a modified version of Acronis True Image and is a large file.
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ravencajun Zone 8b TX
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many of the external hard drives come formatted as Fat32 but you can reformat it to NTFS which is what you probably want anyway. I got a Seagate Free Agent Pro that one comes formatted as NTFS.

Your directions with the new back up drive should tell you how to do that or on the website look up you model and there should be user manuals available.

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