Back-up disk question

cello · Post by **cello** » Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:48 pm

I've been organising my back-up drive and noticed something new...

The back-up drive is 120Gb. But when I look at its properties in Windows Vista is says it's only 4Gb in size...

Is there something wrong with my drive or does the O only recognise (and hence formats it) up to 4Gb?

Kevin Nolan · Post by **Kevin Nolan** » Tue Mar 22, 2011 2:15 pm

Cello -

The OASYS recognises well beyond 4GB - I have a 500 GB external HD attached to mine and it has cretainly accepted many 10's of GB of data onto it.

this sounds like a HD formatting issue - as in how the HD was originally formatted. I'm not up on all of that but believe that if the disk is formatted in FAT32 format then only up to 4GB can be physically addressed and the rest of the HD space remains unavailable. You may have to back up your backup drive and reformat it in NTFS format. But I'd make a quick check with any computer experts you know (or give someone in PC World a buzz).

cello · Post by **cello** » Tue Mar 22, 2011 3:27 pm

Thanks for the quick reply Kevin

Tried formatting as NTSC but the 4Gb disk limit remains.

I used another hard drive, formatted as NTSC showing 160Gb available. Plugged into the O, scanned devices and the new hard disc wasn't recognised. So I formatted using the O Utility menu and bang - recognisable but now only 4Gb available. I've read the parameter guide and it says the O can recognise up to 2Tb as FAT32.

So how come my O formats the disk as 4Gb? (and in such a way that my PC can't reinstate the true physical size - it locks it down to 4Gb leaving me with 2 expensive thumb drives!)

Advice appreciated!

cello · Post by **cello** » Tue Mar 22, 2011 4:04 pm

Right - sorted problem which was not logical in the end - but it works

For anyone else with this issue, this worked for me:

First I read this article over at KarmaLab http://www.karma-lab.com/forum/showthre ... ght=Format

Second I downloaded this application... http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index. ... format.htm

I then formatted the hard disk while attached to my PC using the above app. PLEASE NOTE!! It still shows 4Gb...

Take the formatted hard drive to the O.

Using the Disk/Utility menu, first scan for the device then select the format menu item. Select Quick Format and Fat32 and then format.

Once complete the O shows the full hard disk size - much joy!