OT - using DVD to move files

stepfour wrote on 7/17/2003, 7:09 PM
My nephew who lives in another city is a budding NL editor but does not have a camcorder or way to get video into his computer. I want to give him some AVI's of some footage I have and let him play with it in that movie maker program in XP. Problem is, what's the best method to send him 10 AVI clips of about 300mb each. I was thinking of copying them to a DVD-R but I'm not sure if there will be problems.

His computer is a new Dell running WIN XP and I assume on a FAT32 file system. Mine runs WIN2K SP2 with NTFS file system. What problems might I run into trying to share files with him using the method I describle? Will XP even load a file that came from WIN2k? Thanks for any insight.

Comments

Paul_Holmes wrote on 7/17/2003, 8:06 PM
I'm no expert on FAT32 versus NTFS. My understanding is that it just stores the same bits and bytes in a slightly different manner in NTFS allowing more security over the file system. Any avi file you copy from NTFS should copy to FAT32 and work just fine!

Someone like Chienworks would know the technical details of all this.
bdunn wrote on 7/17/2003, 8:13 PM
2Road, shouldn't be a problem. I transfer files all the time between WinXP / NTFS and
Win98 / FAT32. You might want to consider an RW disc, that way he can off load and send it back to you to fill up again. WinXP does support NTFS or FAT32, but with the file sizes you mention it really shouldn't matter.
Chienworks wrote on 7/17/2003, 8:29 PM
Should be fine as long as you stay under 4GB. I can't think of any other problems that could come up ... assuming he has a DVD drive in his computer, of course.

Additional thought, If he's running XP he might want to consider converting his drive to NTFS.
stepfour wrote on 7/17/2003, 10:03 PM
Good info. I'm going to give it a try. Thanks, to all.
LarryP wrote on 7/17/2003, 10:48 PM
Just to claify a DVD-ROM (a dvd with data files on it) uses an ISO file system so it doesn't matter if the computer uses FAT32 or NTFS at least for the 300mB files you mentioned.

Larry
jetdv wrote on 7/18/2003, 8:22 AM
Why would you assume FAT32 on an XP machine? I would assume NTFS until told otherwise. However, as long as no files exceed 4Gig it won't be a problem EITHER way.
stepfour wrote on 7/18/2003, 11:22 AM
You're right, I don't know what his new computer file structure is. I just assumed Dell would configure a consumer box in FAT32. Maybe NTFS is the norm nowadays. Thanks to the person who pointed out that it does not matter when it comes to using DVD to shuttle files.
PigsDad wrote on 7/18/2003, 12:22 PM
My new Dell box (in April) came w/ NTFS by default. But as others have said, you are using the file system of the DVDR, not the hard disk so it should not matter.
farss wrote on 7/19/2003, 5:47 AM
The only issue you MAY face is if his machine is FAT32 there is a 2 GByte file limit. If you keep the files on the DVD under that size he won't have an issue. You could just ask him to right click the drive letter, select Properties and Windoz will tell you if its NTFS or FAT32.
jetdv wrote on 7/19/2003, 6:52 AM
FAT32 there is a 2 GByte file limit

No. FAT32 has a FOUR GByte limit!
farss wrote on 7/19/2003, 9:31 AM
Thank you jetdv,
don't know why I've got 2 GByte stuck in my brain!

Never use FAT32 myself so its not something I really need to remember that well.
Chienworks wrote on 7/19/2003, 10:22 AM
There was a problem with some earlier types of AVI files being limited to 2GB, but this had nothing to do with the file system limits.