Files over 4GB

[casey.o]

There has been some mention of files over 4GB which requires the NTFS
format on a hard drive. My question is this: What kind of file would
be that large? I've downloaded several full length (2 hour) movies from
youtube, and they're all about 400MB or smaller. I just cant imagine
what kind of file would be over 4GB. Even a 10 hour movie (which I
doubt exists) would only be around 2GB.

 

[casey.o]

Simple example that occurs quite frequently: backup files and images.

Jeff Barnett

I never thought of that, since I only backup file by file. (just a copy
of them). I dont trust backup software which compresses files together.
I learned that the hard way back in the early 90's when I was still
using Win3.x (or was it Win95???) I had made a compressed backup, and
because there was a flaw in it, the entire backup was useless.
Fortunately, I was able to save most of the data directly from the
FAILING hard drive.

 

[casey.o]

Adobe CS6 Master Collection is about 16GB
Adobe CS6 Design & Web Premium
Adobe CS6 Design Standard
Adobe CS6 Production Premium

All of the above files are bigger than 4GB. Also, Databases files can
be quite big if you try to create backups of them.

As you may know, Corporations are going towards downloading of their
Applications from their website to stop people pirating their software.
So files are likely to get bigger by the day unless they release in
small chunks at a time or use of download manager will be on the increase.

Leave it to Adobe to create such ridiculously large files, which are
probably mostly bloat anyhow..... But I'm not familiar with any of
these programs. But I'm no fan of Adobe either. Just their PDF reader
has gotten excessively large, and yet it does less than other competing
PDF readers.

I would not even attempt to download a 16GB file. I just downloaded a
450meg file and even at a fast WIFI, it took well over a half hour, and
I paused it every 8 minutes or so, to save what was downloaded thus far,
in case I'd lose connection to the WIFI and then would have to start
over again. I actually did lose the connection at around 210mb, and was
able to restore my last "save" of about 180mb and continue.....

Since we're on the topic of download managers. Can anyone recommend one
for Firefox (an Addon) that will actually save the partially downloaded
file? All of the ones I have tried are nothing more than a glorified
version of the built in "download manager" (in Firefox), which does NOT
save a failed download. That's why I tend to pause large files and save
the portions to another folder.

 

[casey.o]

Quite true. I don't backup my entire drive as such. All I do is image
my original setup of the OS without any Applications and I backup the
data I create myself such as documents, emails, photos, videos etc etc.
I rely on my Original Application CDs and DVDs as my backup.

Also, I have found that Some Microsoft updates are withdrawn and new
ones released in their place so I don't see any reason to backup a
system with updates on it. I have a pretty fast Internet connection
with Unlimited downloads so it helps here. You may know that it is
almost impossible to have Dialup connection in the UK these days. All
you have is Broadband with up to 16 MB/sec download speed as the
minimum. I have about 38 MB download speed on BT Infinity Fibre Optic
Broadband.

I just make a direct COPY of my entire harddrive (partition by
partition) to an external USB harddrive. On the external drive, I make
folders called CC DD EE FF GG HH etc. Drive C: gets copied to CC, and
so on. The only problem that occurs with this is that the boot
partition contains some files that wont copy. In XP and Win2000, that
includes the WINDOWS and the DOCUMENTS and SETTINGS folders. In Win98,
it's just the swap file that needs to be skipped. But there is a
workaround for that, since I dual boot. I backup all my data only
partitions using either OS. But I boot to Win98 to backup my Win2000
partition, (still skipping the swap file, which is worthless to save).
Then I boot to Win2000 to backup the Win98 stuff.

On my XP machine, I really dont have much personal stuff saved, but I
have found a means to backup all the XP folders, by booting to Puppy
Linux. Then I can just copy everything, including the Windows and Docs
& Sets folders. I dont really use Linux much, but it's real handy for
this. I CAN backup the linux folders at the same time, they dont
contain files that refuses to copy, like XP does.

Another method would be to CLONE a partition, using Partition Magic or
some other similar program, but I prefer to not create partitions on my
backup USB drives and thus my other method (above) works better.

 

[Good Guy]

There has been some mention of files over 4GB which requires the NTFS
format on a hard drive. My question is this: What kind of file would
be that large? I've downloaded several full length (2 hour) movies from
youtube, and they're all about 400MB or smaller. I just cant imagine
what kind of file would be over 4GB. Even a 10 hour movie (which I
doubt exists) would only be around 2GB.

Adobe CS6 Master Collection is about 16GB
Adobe CS6 Design & Web Premium
Adobe CS6 Design Standard
Adobe CS6 Production Premium

All of the above files are bigger than 4GB. Also, Databases files can
be quite big if you try to create backups of them.

As you may know, Corporations are going towards downloading of their
Applications from their website to stop people pirating their software.
So files are likely to get bigger by the day unless they release in
small chunks at a time or use of download manager will be on the increase.

 

[casey.o]

But you also have to consider the benefit of encryption when the HD is
formatted as NTFS. FAT32 can't be encrypted as easily even if it might
be possible using the third party software.

I don't know if this is true but I am told that when flash drives are
formatted as NTFS, the encryption can enforce that it can only be
decrypted on the machine that was used to encrypt it in the first place.
Now this is very useful if it is true because you can store your
passwords on flash drives and carry with you knowing that it can't be
decrypted so easily. I need to test this out one day.

I've never had a need to encrypt anything. No one else uses my
computer, and if it did get into the wrong hands, they'll only be faced
with stuff I saved from the internet anyhow, or my own artwork or
database of phone numbers and addresses.

You are wrong about the format of flash drives. Just the other day, I
had to reformat one of them. For some reason, after I copied a bunch of
saved youtube videos from my laptop to my Win98 computer, one of the
files on the flash drive refused to allow me to delete it. Somehow it
got corrupted. I just copied that file using another flash drive from
the laptop. But I decided that there was some sort of problem on that
flash drive, and either it was failing, or (because I had filled it to
the maximum), something got corrupted. I put it in Win98 machine and
ran SCANDISK. Scandisk found errors, but I still cound not delete that
one file.

I also tried to do the same using XP. CHKDSK, still could not delete
that file. Using XP, I just reformatted that flash drive. NO PROBLEMS
SINCE!!!!

Before formatting it, I checked and it had a FAT32 format, so I
reformatted the same. This particular flash drive is 8GB. I have never
used larger ones, but all of them I have used over the years are Fat32.
That's starting with one of my first ones which I believe was 500MB, and
many more that were either 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, and lately the 8GB ones. I
have never gotten a Flash Drive with NTFS on it, from the store.

Many say on the package that they will also work on a Macintosh
computer. I'm not sure what they call the format for a MAC, but I'm
assuming they mean that the MAC user has to reformat. I cant see how a
MAC can use Fat32, unless the Mac can now read and write to Fat32. I'm
not sure..... I only recall about 20 years ago, I had to use a MAC
computer at work, and needed to copy something to a floppy. The floppy
was a standard PC one, which I believe is FAT-16, or is that just called
FAT???? I had to reformat the floppy to use it, and then I could not
read that floppy on my own computer (Win3.x or Dos).

I have seen 128GB Flash drives on Ebay. I dont know what format they
use. I dont see a need to pay the high price for them. An external USB
HDD is much cheaper. Plus I would suspect that flash drives that large
would tend to get corrupted quicker, and maybe even fail sooner. That's
an awful lot of data to cram on that tiny stick.... For my needs, the
8GB size is fine. And I still hve sevearl smaller ones too.

 

[Jeff Barnett]

Good Guy wrote, On 5/4/2014 3:58 PM:

Adobe CS6 Master Collection is about 16GB
Adobe CS6 Design & Web Premium
Adobe CS6 Design Standard
Adobe CS6 Production Premium

All of the above files are bigger than 4GB. Also, Databases files can
be quite big if you try to create backups of them.

As you may know, Corporations are going towards downloading of their
Applications from their website to stop people pirating their software.
So files are likely to get bigger by the day unless they release in
small chunks at a time or use of download manager will be on the increase.

Simple example that occurs quite frequently: backup files and images.

Jeff Barnett

 

[Good Guy]

Good Guy wrote, On 5/4/2014 3:58 PM:

Simple example that occurs quite frequently: backup files and images.

Jeff Barnett

Quite true. I don't backup my entire drive as such. All I do is image
my original setup of the OS without any Applications and I backup the
data I create myself such as documents, emails, photos, videos etc etc.
I rely on my Original Application CDs and DVDs as my backup.

Also, I have found that Some Microsoft updates are withdrawn and new
ones released in their place so I don't see any reason to backup a
system with updates on it. I have a pretty fast Internet connection
with Unlimited downloads so it helps here. You may know that it is
almost impossible to have Dialup connection in the UK these days. All
you have is Broadband with up to 16 MB/sec download speed as the
minimum. I have about 38 MB download speed on BT Infinity Fibre Optic
Broadband.

 

[Good Guy]

I never thought of that, since I only backup file by file. (just a copy
of them). I dont trust backup software which compresses files together.
I learned that the hard way back in the early 90's when I was still
using Win3.x (or was it Win95???) I had made a compressed backup, and
because there was a flaw in it, the entire backup was useless.
Fortunately, I was able to save most of the data directly from the
FAILING hard drive.

But you also have to consider the benefit of encryption when the HD is
formatted as NTFS. FAT32 can't be encrypted as easily even if it might
be possible using the third party software.

I don't know if this is true but I am told that when flash drives are
formatted as NTFS, the encryption can enforce that it can only be
decrypted on the machine that was used to encrypt it in the first place.
Now this is very useful if it is true because you can store your
passwords on flash drives and carry with you knowing that it can't be
decrypted so easily. I need to test this out one day.

 

[casey.o]

(e-mail address removed) wrote, On 5/4/2014 3:10 PM:

Casey, I hope that one negative experience didn't sour you on backups
forever. As you may or may not know, the NTFS protocols are much, much
more resilient to various sorts of failures. There is some journal
keeping behind the scene that makes it possible to redo certain
operations when they initially fail. NTFS is more able to recover from
bad power events, disk errors, etc. All these things also help make
backups more robust.

Jeff Barnett

While all software has improved since that time, I much prefer to save
files one by one. (copy a whole folder tree, or entire drive or
partition). If I accidentally delete "myartwork.jpg". all I need to do
is plug in my backup drive, and copy it back, rather than have to load a
backup program and go thru a whole process. And while backup programs
do compress the data, I'm not too worried about space. I have a 1TB
backup drive. My Win98/2K computer has 240GB of drive space, and my XP
machine has 500GB, but has little on it, and my laptop only has a 40GB
drive. So I can backup ALL computers at least TWICE, just making a
COPY.

I usually do have two backups. I copy C: to CC on Jan 1, 2014, and copy
C: to CC2 on Feb 1, 2014. When I backup on Mar 1, 2014, I delete CC DD
etc and start over. That way I always have double copies.

Additionally, my most important data, such as personal photos and my
music collection, I have another 500GB external drive, and also copy
that stuff to that drive too.

 

[Jeff Barnett]

I never thought of that, since I only backup file by file. (just a copy
of them). I dont trust backup software which compresses files together.
I learned that the hard way back in the early 90's when I was still
using Win3.x (or was it Win95???) I had made a compressed backup, and
because there was a flaw in it, the entire backup was useless.
Fortunately, I was able to save most of the data directly from the
FAILING hard drive.

Casey, I hope that one negative experience didn't sour you on backups
forever. As you may or may not know, the NTFS protocols are much, much
more resilient to various sorts of failures. There is some journal
keeping behind the scene that makes it possible to redo certain
operations when they initially fail. NTFS is more able to recover from
bad power events, disk errors, etc. All these things also help make
backups more robust.

Jeff Barnett

 

[Bob F]

There has been some mention of files over 4GB which requires the NTFS
format on a hard drive. My question is this: What kind of file would
be that large? I've downloaded several full length (2 hour) movies
from youtube, and they're all about 400MB or smaller. I just cant
imagine what kind of file would be over 4GB. Even a 10 hour movie
(which I doubt exists) would only be around 2GB.

I've seen High Definition Movies over 14GB.

 

[Bob F]

I just make a direct COPY of my entire harddrive (partition by
partition) to an external USB harddrive. On the external drive, I
make folders called CC DD EE FF GG HH etc. Drive C: gets copied to
CC, and so on. The only problem that occurs with this is that the
boot partition contains some files that wont copy. In XP and
Win2000, that includes the WINDOWS and the DOCUMENTS and SETTINGS
folders. In Win98, it's just the swap file that needs to be skipped.
But there is a workaround for that, since I dual boot. I backup all
my data only partitions using either OS. But I boot to Win98 to
backup my Win2000 partition, (still skipping the swap file, which is
worthless to save). Then I boot to Win2000 to backup the Win98 stuff.

On my XP machine, I really dont have much personal stuff saved, but I
have found a means to backup all the XP folders, by booting to Puppy
Linux. Then I can just copy everything, including the Windows and
Docs & Sets folders. I dont really use Linux much, but it's real
handy for this. I CAN backup the linux folders at the same time,
they dont contain files that refuses to copy, like XP does.

Another method would be to CLONE a partition, using Partition Magic or
some other similar program, but I prefer to not create partitions on
my backup USB drives and thus my other method (above) works better.

I keep frequent backup images of my C: drive for quick recovery purposes. If you
get an infection, trying to recover can be tedious. It is much easier to just
restore an image and get back to work than trying to track down all the detailed
damage done by an infection and recover from it, or re-building a system by
re-installing all the OS and programs you had on it.. The image is also
excellent if a drive just dies, which has happened to me. Having an incremental
backup also enables you to fix the few files that have changed since the image
backup.

 

[Mayayana]

I have some video ISOs for DVD that are bigger
than 4 GB. (They're not compressed.) I just maintain
one NTFS partition to store them on. It works fine
as long as the software that deals with the files can
handle over 4 GB.

| There has been some mention of files over 4GB which requires the NTFS
| format on a hard drive. My question is this: What kind of file would
| be that large? I've downloaded several full length (2 hour) movies from
| youtube, and they're all about 400MB or smaller. I just cant imagine
| what kind of file would be over 4GB. Even a 10 hour movie (which I
| doubt exists) would only be around 2GB.
|

 

[Ken Springer]

Many say on the package that they will also work on a Macintosh
computer. I'm not sure what they call the format for a MAC, but I'm
assuming they mean that the MAC user has to reformat. I cant see how a
MAC can use Fat32, unless the Mac can now read and write to Fat32. I'm
not sure..... I only recall about 20 years ago, I had to use a MAC
computer at work, and needed to copy something to a floppy. The floppy
was a standard PC one, which I believe is FAT-16, or is that just called
FAT???? I had to reformat the floppy to use it, and then I could not
read that floppy on my own computer (Win3.x or Dos).

They will indeed work on a Mac. I use them all the time. There are a
couple of caveats, though.

My Mac is OS X 10.8.5, Snow Leopard. The current OS is 10.9.x,
Mavericks, which I have not upgraded to. It's a free upgrade, but
except for one thing I can't remember, Mavericks offers me little for
day to day functionality.

I don't know the entire history of OS X reading and writing to IBM
formats, but this computer came with 10.5.X, Leopard. The computer is
5.5 years old. Natively, it can read, write to, and format flash drives
and hard disks in FAT32 and ex-FAT. Don't ask me what ex-FAT actually
means, I've forgotten. LOL

As for NTFS, Leopard and after can read NTFS formatted flash drives and
hard disks. And that's it. But there are utilities out there that
extend OS X that will allow you to read, write to, and format flash
drives and hard disks in NTFS format. I have one installed, so I have
no interchangeability issues. Plug them into a USB port, and away we go.

I have the feeling you may have missed something on that Mac from years
ago. I didn't own one at the time, but I do have a PowerMac 6400 that
reads, writes to, and formats DOS floppies just fine. System 9.2.
Doing just a bit of searching, it appears Apple began to add IBM
compatibility via different methods around System 7 with software like
Apple File Exchange. I've got an old Quadra in boxes I'd like to set up
someday, and just see what it does.

One of the main reasons PC's could not read Mac disks was due to the
format and the floppy drive itself. The drive had a variable speed, and
a 720k PC floppy formatted for Macs stores 800k. There's no reason I
know of that a PC drive couldn't read a Mac formatted floppy using a
third party utility. Whether any utility was ever written, I don't know.

The reason I say PCs should be able to read/write them is because the
Atari line of computers used the same floppy drive mechanisms as the PC.
I had a utility that would read, write to, and format a Mac floppy.

And the only difference in the formatting of the an Atari floppy disk
was a single byte of information, and that byte prevented the PC from
reading and writing Atari formatted diskettes. An update of the Atari
OS and/or third party utilities fixed that. And the Atari could format
a floppy the PC could read and write to, but not match format the Atari
formatted diskette. I used to PO a friend of mine with this and other
things I could do that he couldn't with his PC.




--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 25.0
Thunderbird 24.3.0
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

 

[Paul]

+1.
Having an image or clone backup to me is - indispensable, and I like keeping
several generational (image) backups. And not having to deal with that 4GB
limitation can come in handy there, too. Fortunately I can image or backup
this system in about 10 minutes. (But that does not include my video and
music libraries, though)

This is why we keep C: relatively small, and move the huge file
collections off to data partitions. It allows C: to be backed up in ten
minutes. I did one today, before attempting a sound card fix in
Windows 8. I don't mind restoring the whole thing, if something
goes wrong. Because it's only ten minutes.

Paul

 

[casey.o]

I have the feeling you may have missed something on that Mac from years
ago. I didn't own one at the time, but I do have a PowerMac 6400 that
reads, writes to, and formats DOS floppies just fine. System 9.2.
Doing just a bit of searching, it appears Apple began to add IBM
compatibility via different methods around System 7 with software like
Apple File Exchange. I've got an old Quadra in boxes I'd like to set up
someday, and just see what it does.

I worked at that place around 1994 - 96. That MAC computer was probably
from the early 90's. So, I dont know if those old ones would work or
not, but I could have missed something too. I do recall asking the
secretary if there was a way to copy the company logo (graphic) and some
clipart to a floppy so I could use it at home on my PC. Somehow she did
it, but for all I know, she may have had another Mac and a PC at her
home and had them networked together or something. I never asked how, I
just found the images worked on my PC when I got home.

It's been years since I used that MAC, so I dont even recall if those
pictures were in a format that could be read on a PC, such as JPG, GIF,
BMP, etc.... ? It seems to me that the Mac had it's own format in
pictures, but I just cant remember anymore....

From what I've heard, the newer macs are more pc compatible.

 

[casey.o]

I keep frequent backup images of my C: drive for quick recovery purposes. If you
get an infection, trying to recover can be tedious. It is much easier to just
restore an image and get back to work than trying to track down all the detailed
damage done by an infection and recover from it, or re-building a system by
re-installing all the OS and programs you had on it.. The image is also
excellent if a drive just dies, which has happened to me. Having an incremental
backup also enables you to fix the few files that have changed since the image
backup.

Some years ago, I had Win98 get all corrupted. I probably got some sort
of malware, but I never found out the cause. I spent hours trying to
fix it, got pissed, and decided to just delete it and restore my last
backup. But then it would not boot. So, I wiped the whole drive,
reinstalled Win98 from scratch. After I booted it up, I copied all the
files from my most recent backup back to the drive. But I renamed the
"Windows" folder to another name before copying it back. Than I booted
to Dos, renamed the NEW install (of windows) to something other than
"Windows", and renamed the backup one to "Windows". When I rebooted, I
had my original install back, and just deleted the extra folder with the
windows files. (the new install).

I doubt this would work as easily in XP, since the newer OSs are a lot
more picky and hard to do stuff like this to.

I do have a clone of XP on a spare 10G HDD. Just the Windows folder an
D&S folder. I dont know how well that would work if I lost everything,
but I know I can at least restore the OS. All my saved data is on
another backup. so I should be able to get things back to working. (I
do everything possible to keep all data files OUT of the D&S folder.

 

[casey.o]

I've seen High Definition Movies over 14GB.

Where would you get such large movies. Are they blue ray? I dont have
a clue how much data is on a blue ray DVD. I know a regular DVD can
hold up to 4.7GB, which IS over that 4GB limit. But as far as I know (I
may be wrong), a DVD movie consists of several files, not just one large
file. I'm not sure how to view the contents of a DVD.....

This also brings up another questiion. If I can download a full length
(2 hour) movie from youtube, which is around 400MB or smaller, why is a
DVD movie so much bigger? I'm guessing it's a higher definition, but
how much bigger? The ones I downloaded are not bad quality.

Speaking of Blue Ray, what is the real difference between them and a
regular DVD? I only have one blue ray disk. The package came with both
blue ray and DVD. I only got that because it was cheaper than the
regular DVD (on ebay). At the time I did not have a blue ray player.
but I bought one in december because it was on sale and my old DVD
player was not working properly anymore. I played both the DVD and the
Bluw Ray, and could not see any difference. My tv is less than a year
old (HDTV) so I dont know why people pay twice as much for blue ray???

 

[Ken Springer]

I worked at that place around 1994 - 96. That MAC computer was probably
from the early 90's. So, I dont know if those old ones would work or
not, but I could have missed something too. I do recall asking the
secretary if there was a way to copy the company logo (graphic) and some
clipart to a floppy so I could use it at home on my PC. Somehow she did
it, but for all I know, she may have had another Mac and a PC at her
home and had them networked together or something. I never asked how, I
just found the images worked on my PC when I got home.

IIRC, Mac's in those days could be networked, maybe just
pseudo-networked, with AppleTalk. At least, that's what I think
AppleTalk is for.

It's been years since I used that MAC, so I dont even recall if those
pictures were in a format that could be read on a PC, such as JPG, GIF,
BMP, etc.... ? It seems to me that the Mac had it's own format in
pictures, but I just cant remember anymore....

Way back then, Mac's default graphic format for screenshots, etc. was
TIFF. That's probably due to the fact Apple was far and away the leader
in the graphics industry. It's a standard image format, like jpg, gif,
etc. They didn't create their own file format like MS did with BMP. I
think MS thought they would take the world by storm with BMP, but it
doesn't look like it worked, as they now allow JPG's for wallpaper and
such in the Windows folder. Or where ever they stick them today.

TIFF, .tif for the file extension in the PC world, sometimes you'll see
the extension .tiff for other systems, stands for Tagged Image File
Format. I suspect, if you do high end graphics work, or simply want the
best output, it's still the preferred image type.

From what I've heard, the newer macs are more pc compatible.

I guess that depends on what you mean by "pc compatible".



--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 25.0
Thunderbird 24.3.0
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"