Backup

[Harmon Koeltz]

Just purchased a Western Digital 120 gig USB external drive which is in FAT
32. When I try to run Vista's Backup it finds the drive just fine but I get
an error message that the backup device has a corrupted file and to choose
another location and reference to this error code 0x81000008

The drive came with software preinstalled but I think I want to use the
Vista program.
Perhaps the backup drive needs to be reformatted to NFTS

TIA

Harmon

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

A FAT32 formatted drive will not be able to house a file larger than 4GB in
size, and a backup will likely be considerably larger than this. Convert the
drive to NTFS if you want to use it for this purpose. I would suggest that
you simply copy any data on that drive to your main system drive, then use
the disk manager (diskmgmt.msc) to delete the FAT32 volume and create an
NTFS one. Format it from Windows Explorer and it's ready for use. If you use
the convert method instead, you will likely wind up with 512byte clusters as
opposed to 4K ones which can be very inefficient and slow the system down.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Harmon Koeltz]

Hi,

A FAT32 formatted drive will not be able to house a file larger than 4GB
in size, and a backup will likely be considerably larger than this.
Convert the drive to NTFS if you want to use it for this purpose. I would
suggest that you simply copy any data on that drive to your main system
drive, then use the disk manager (diskmgmt.msc) to delete the FAT32 volume
and create an NTFS one. Format it from Windows Explorer and it's ready for
use. If you use the convert method instead, you will likely wind up with
512byte clusters as opposed to 4K ones which can be very inefficient and
slow the system down.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

Not sure if this is pertinent, but none of the files approaches 4 gig except
maybe one video file. The total backup is probably 6-8 gig. If I read your
suggestion correctly, I should copy the info from the external drive (a
backup program and a few other things) onto the computer's hard drive, and
re format. Can I use properties-format for the external drive?

TIA

Harmon

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Harmon,

Not sure if this is pertinent, but none of the files approaches 4 gig
except maybe one video file. The total backup is probably 6-8 gig.

Vista backup creates one large file, so it doesn't matter what the
individual file sizes are. If the sum total exceeds 4GB, the backup will
fail because of the limitations of FAT32.

If I read your suggestion correctly, I should copy the info from the
external drive (a backup program and a few other things) onto the
computer's hard drive, and re format. Can I use properties-format for the
external drive?

Close, but it's more than just formatting. Copy the info from the external
drive. Then, run diskmgmt.msc and use this tool to remove the existing
partitions on the drive. Then use it to create new ones. Once created, you
can right click the drive in Windows Explorer and use the format option.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Eduardo Laureano [MSFT]]

Actually the file backup app in Windows Vista create zip files no bigger
than 200 MB to allow for CD/DVD spanning. If a single file is too big it
will be cut in pieces and span across multiple zips. A FAT32 destination can
be used on the destination volume as well, although not the best option for
a place where you are relying your important data.

Eduardo

 

[Eduardo Laureano [MSFT]]

Also from the original email you are getting error 0x81000008, which
typically represents that you need to run chkdsk on it to fix problems.