Yes, the portable hard drive is formatted FAT32 which has a maximum file size limit of 4 gig per file. Most portable hard drives come formatted this way because the FAT32 file system is supported by MACs and PCs. You must format the drive as NTFS to save files larger than 4 gig.

Stictly speaking you don't need to completely reformat your drive -- you can convert it from FAT32 to NTFS without losing the data that is already on it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881

Be warned that once converted to NTFS, the drive and its files will no longer be accessible to computers running Win 95/98/Me, and I think maybe not accessible by Mac's, though maybe they can read NTFS but not write it? (I'm not sure)

Depending on the size of the FAT32 disc, when you use CONVERT.EXE you might end up with an undesirable cluster size of 512 bytes instead of the default NTFS 4KB cluster size. The performance hit is quite noticeable.

One way to check cluster size is to run the defrag tool built into the OS (You don't need to actually run a defrag, just hit the "analyze" button and when it's done click on "View report").

If you see a cluster size of 4KB, you're good. However, a lot of people who converted using the method above will see a cluster size of 512 Bytes. If you see a cluster size of 512 then most likely you've done more harm than good using the CONVERT tool when it comes to performance and efficiency. In this case, you probably want to format the drive as NTFS instead of converting it.

And on the Mac/Linux compatibility question, I just this afternoon got a practical education on the topic.

Mac OS X and Linux systems can all read NTFS but they can't write to an NTFS volume on their own. In order to get read/write functionality you can install a utility from Tuxera. The open source version is NTFS-3G and there's also a proprietary version that's supposed to offer better NTFS performance.

Most Linux users would probably get NTFS-3G from a managed software repository. Ubuntu provides Synaptic as a tool to get software packages. I don't know how the OS X folks do it.

Most file-based cameras use FAT32 formatted media and break the files at 4GB. FAT32 is pretty universal and if you buy an external disk drive it may come from the factory in this format.

We just bought 3 Lacie drives that were Mac formatted, which is why we got the practical lesson today. We reformatted them to NTSC (edit--meant NTFS here) rather than FAT32, handed them to someone to test on a Mac, were told they were fine, and then sent them out with a cameraman. Turns out the drives were only readable on the cameraman's Macbook and he couldn't transfer files from P2 cards to the drives. Lesson learned.

Rob Mack

@Rob Mack: We reformatted them to NTSC ... Turns out the drives were only readable on the cameraman's Macbook...

Maybe the Macbook was formatted for PAL?

(j/k) I caught myself almost typing "NTSC" instead of NTFS in my post above...

@John: Thanks for the extra info. I had an external drive years ago that was Fat32 and I did the Convert thing to convert to NTFS (probably something I learned here or on the VMS forum). I didn't realize there might be performance issues with a converted drive compared to a fresh formatted drive.

Tim L

the versions of linux I've used in the past read/wrote ntsf out of the box...

A thing about cluster size: 5kb would greatly help the speed, but that's also the minimum file size on the drive (and every file is rounded up to that size). So a 1byte empty text file takes up 4kb. It's not an issue here, but if you were formatting a drive & planned on having lots of tiny files, you should use the smaller option.

Hah. Good catch. Yeah, NTFS. Doh!

Clever.

Rob