I tried to backup my laptop to a 500GB external hardrive. a message came up saying that it coudn't be completed as it had run out of space. The amount saved was 3.99GB. How can this be if the hard drive is 500GB?My system says that it is NTFS but I have read that if it was in FAT 32 you can only save 4GB. could this be the problem?

You posted a question relating to winxp to a win7 group??You dont say what you are backing up or what you are using to backup. The default NT backup? If your external is formated as Fat32 that would be your problem.

On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:34:33 +0000, Livsart wrote:I tried to backup my laptop to a 500GB external hardrive. a message came up saying that it coudn't be completed as it had run out of space. The amount saved was 3.99GB. How can this be if the hard drive is 500GB?My system says that it is NTFS but I have read that if it was in FAT 32 you can only save 4GB. could this be the problem?Yes, almost certainly it is the problem. A FAT32 file has a maximumsize of 4GB. and the "run out of space" message is the misleadingmessage that you get if you try to create a larger file..Note that your system is not NTFS; it's your system drive that'sNTFS. Almost certainly your external drive is FAT32, and you shouldreformat it as NTFS.Ken Blake (MS MVP)

Hi Ken,thanks! That solved it, it's all backed up now. Appreciate your help :)

On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:42:21 +0000, Livsart wrote:Hi Ken,thanks! That solved it, it's all backed up now. Appreciate your help :)You're welcome. Glad to help.Ken Blake (MS MVP)