Formtting USB Drive

[Jim T.]

I have a Seagate 160GB USB drive that I use primarily for backups. It
is formatted for FAT32.
When I backup my Full C Drive, it breaks up the backup files into
roughly 4GB pieces.
I think that it's the drive format not the software (Backup My PC).
Can I format the drive as NTFS? I have an older Partition Magic that
has always worked for me.
As a sideline, I have to turn the drive off and on before it is
recognized now. Maybe it's failing?

 

[kony]

I have a Seagate 160GB USB drive that I use primarily for backups. It
is formatted for FAT32.
When I backup my Full C Drive, it breaks up the backup files into
roughly 4GB pieces.
I think that it's the drive format not the software (Backup My PC).
Can I format the drive as NTFS?

Yes

I have an older Partition Magic that
has always worked for me.

Make sure it supports NTFS.

As a sideline, I have to turn the drive off and on before it is
recognized now. Maybe it's failing?

More details? If you disconnected/ejected/etc it, you will
have to unplug and replug it.

 

[John McGaw]

I have a Seagate 160GB USB drive that I use primarily for backups. It
is formatted for FAT32.
When I backup my Full C Drive, it breaks up the backup files into
roughly 4GB pieces.
I think that it's the drive format not the software (Backup My PC).
Can I format the drive as NTFS? I have an older Partition Magic that
has always worked for me.
As a sideline, I have to turn the drive off and on before it is
recognized now. Maybe it's failing?

You might want to check with the software maker. Some backup programs
break up their files into blocks which can easily be burned onto media
such as a DVD. You can format the drive as NTFS, given its size, but
unless there is some overriding reason to do so I find that removable
media is best when formatted in the most widely-compatible form.

 

[kony]

You might want to check with the software maker. Some backup programs
break up their files into blocks which can easily be burned onto media
such as a DVD. You can format the drive as NTFS, given its size, but
unless there is some overriding reason to do so I find that removable
media is best when formatted in the most widely-compatible form.

Since the backup program is likely able to use NTFS, and
there's probably nothing else that can make use of these
backup files except the program that made them, it doesn't
necessarily matter what format the storage partition uses,
so long as the OS itself also supports this filesystem
(should someone administrating this want to move the files
elsewhere later).

On the other hand, is it really a problem that the backups
are split into 4GB chunks? Might be a virtue, since this
more easily facilitates putting, copying those files onto
DVDs for redundancy.

 

[Guest]

| I have a Seagate 160GB USB drive that I use primarily for backups. It
| is formatted for FAT32.
| When I backup my Full C Drive, it breaks up the backup files into
| roughly 4GB pieces.
| I think that it's the drive format not the software (Backup My PC).
| Can I format the drive as NTFS? I have an older Partition Magic that
| has always worked for me.
| As a sideline, I have to turn the drive off and on before it is
| recognized now. Maybe it's failing?

I ran into a problem where a Seagate FreeAgent portable (the smaller ones)
160GB drive would idle down after some time, then not work anymore until it
was either power cycled, or the USB cable was disconnected and reconnected.
Both of these "cures" would also confuse the filesystem mounting on Linux.
While experimenting, I have found that if I send a LOT of I/O commands to
the drive after it is in this condition, it will eventually spin back up.
But it sends "device not ready" status back instantly for all such commands
until it has finished spinning up (does not good for a mounted filesystem).

My Western Digital USB drives (4 of them now) behave just fine. When they
spin down then get an I/O request, they hold the request while spinning up
then finish it. So I can safely leave a filesystem mounted on them all the
time (just being sure not to unplug them).

My boss encountered the same problem on a full size Seagate FreeAgent 500GB
drive although the "LOT of I/O commands" test was not done.

So I'm waiting for Western Digital to get an eSATA 750GB drive on the market
so I can begin the migration to SATA. I'm not going to bother with Seagate
until they announce that this problem has been fixed.