Transferring 4GB files

[ian turner]

Both suggestions have their failings since youtube is too slow and linking by cable requires er a cable and I'm guessing they have a router so a direct link is unnecessary and they may have wireless and even then there's the matter of setting up shared drive areas that can be accessed from two different versions of the OS which has proved tricky in some cases.
Which still leaves the consideration that only two of us have stated the obvious that the external drives are all formatted as fa32 and need to be reformatted to ntfs first after which no problem.
Okay so now three

 

[Mr Haematocrit]

copy the data to your smartphone. I have a Android phone which is based on linux as such does not feature the file limitation of FAT32 etc. It runs a file system called EXT4.
I just use USB2 and copy it across to the device the same way you would any media

 

[MattHB]

I don't really understand why a pen drive won't work. What happens when you try?

 

[RhythMick]

I'm guessing the FAT32 limit is the problem, which crossover cables won't help.

^^ This ^^

 

[Norm]

I don't really understand why a pen drive won't work.

Because most are formatted to FAT32 which doesn't allow files over 4gb?

 

[MattHB]

Because most are formatted to FAT32 which doesn't allow files over 4gb?

So just reformat it?

 

[Norm]

I can't remember the exact process, and I'm on a Nexus at the mo so I can't check, but yes, basically reformat it.

Right click the drive letter and select reformat, there should be an option to select the file system, NTFS & FAT32 will be two of the options (if you are on a Windows machine). Note that reformatting will clear the drive, removing any files on there, especially if you are changing the file system.

 

[PaulSB]

Again thanks for the contributions. I tried the HJSplit route which in a sense was simple and worked well in that I moved a video file to the EHD and it played. However the result was to create 6177 .mpg files of 1400kb one .mpg.joined file of 4GB. I had expected the "join" process would leave me with just one. As a trial I deleted these files, except the 4GB, and as expected it then wouldn't play. I appreciate why this could be but needed to learn.

The question would be this. Is it normal for HJSplit to create and then retain all these files?. Clearly creating them is necessary but having 6000+ files is very untidy and has great potential for future issues - presumably losing or damaging a single file would result in a failure? Though of course losing the 4GB results in failure as well. It just seems to me the HJSplit route increases the potential 6000 fold?

I'm now going down the NTFS route and plan to use a 16GB pen drive while I experiment. Some questions / concerns (I'm not worried if I have to bin the pen drive):

Will my laptop be able to read a pen drive or EHD which has been formatted as NTFS if the laptop has not been altered? I don't really want to reformat the laptop***. I have done it previously but I'm not technical and get nervous about doing things I don't understand if they go wrong.

Are restrictions created as to how I can use the files in the future?

Will a media player still recognise and play the files?

I am going to experiment with this anyway but would like to know the pitfalls, if any, I may face in the future?

Clearly family video is important stuff and while I intend to keep the original tapes and VHS player as I don't really want to go through the long conversion process again.

*** I've done some basic reading since making this post. I'm right in thinking a new laptop running W7 will actually be formatted as NTFS when I purchased it? It seems to have replaced the FAT32 which is used on the pen drives and EHD?

Thanks

 

[Norm]

Yes, a laptop under a dozen years old and running Windows should be able to read NTFS drives without alteration as MicroFlaccid developed NTFS back in the late 1990s. There should be absolutely no difference in using a stick or Ext HD with either FAT32 or NTFS, the Windows OS and any video programs will read the drives in exactly the same way.

I think that you are right and Win7 machines are formatted as NTFS by default but you can downgrade to FAT32 on installation. If the computer's operating system can read the file system, it is possible to use multiple file systems on the same computer, but not on the same physical disk. So you can use two drives differently formatted (either inside the same case or, for instance, external or network drives) but a hard disk can only have one file system.

 

[subaqua]

you can change the settings in hjsplit to create bigger split files. once you have joined them and tested the file plays i delete the .001 .002 etc files

 

[Mr Haematocrit]

I think that you are right and Win7 machines are formatted as NTFS by default but you can downgrade to FAT32 on installation.

FAT32 is no longer available as an option on Windows 7 GUI this has been replaced with exFAT which is an extended version of FAT in effect FAT64 compatible but without that name, it was an important step as drives size grew in cspacity as this is another limitation of FAT32.
As with everything Microsoft do being bloatwear, they never actually remove FAT32 formating capability, its just not available to the 'average user' you can still format in FAT32 using the shell with the following command.

format /FS:FAT32 X:
note X is the letter of the drive you wish to format.

lets face it though nobody should be using FAT these days, it handles capacity poorly, fragments quickly, features no journalling or snapshot functionality, its been extended for far to long and should be allowed to die imho

 

[ian turner]

I think that you are right and Win7 machines are formatted as NTFS by default

So were vista laptops. Given the ever increasing size of hard drives, installed memory and realistically files it's ridiculous for it to be otherwise. FAT32 is a defacto standard across most operating systems despite being a Microsoft development (Consider that FAT had a maximum partition size of 2GB !!!) but regrettably you wouldn't be able to get Linux, Apple and Microsoft to agree a new larger cross platform standard as Microsoft expect their way to be the standard (see Word document format), Apple expect you to buy their equipment and Linux nerds think Microsoft are the antichrist.
So as such the only cross platform standard for larger partition/file sizes are NAS drives which get around this by acting as fileservers thus alleviating the requirement of connect computers being able to recognise the storage format..
As to letting FAT32 die as already noted it's the only file system that external hard drive manufacturers can use on their devices and be sure that the computer illiterate can use their drives without trying to return them complaining that they don't work.

 

[PaulSB]

you can change the settings in hjsplit to create bigger split files. once you have joined them and tested the file plays i delete the .001 .002 etc files

I shall play with this later as I think it's a useful thing to have available, I'm probably doing something wrong in my enthusiasm to get going!

Thanks to all who suggested formatting as NTFS this, as I'm sure you all knew, has solved the problem quickly and simply. Plus I've learnt a bit about the benefits of NTFS over FAT32. I've vaguely been aware of it but have always avoided it presuming it to be "techy" and something I shouldn't play with!!

again many thanks to all for the suggestions

 

[Gooner Mad Dog]

Converting old formats etc may prove problematic had similar issue with phone clips that I then converted to other .mpg etc was able to save move etc then give it a try free http://www.avs4you.com/AVS-Video-Co...oogle&cid=67&gclid=CJ2i9cDJ0LECFQUOfAodtlQAfg worked for me

 

[ian turner]

Not the issue here since they can play the clips they just can't copy them off an ntfs drive onto fat32 drives due to the 4gb maximum file size on fat32.