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“The file is too large for the destination file system.” …say what?
By juliana | September 5, 2008
A few months ago, yuthavong bought a Western Digital 500GB My Book external hard disk. He tested it out and found out it was a bit too noisy for his tastes. So I gets it. Yay! I’m more tolerant of buzzing noises because my desktop has a constant buzz–but I have to admit, the My Book is a lot noisier than I expected and even I switch it off when I’m not using it.
Today, though, I decided to move off some of my Virtual Machine files to the My Book and clear up some of my hard disk. So I switched it on, plugged it in and tried to copy and paste it into the disk…
Windows tells me the file is too large for the destination file system. Bu-wha-? My virtual hard disks is over 4GB…but I checked! My Book had over 350GB free space! I thought it was the network problem (so I plugged it in direct), I thought it was read-only thing (resetting it did nothing), I was scratchin’ my head until I Goggled and figured it out….
The darn thing was formatted in FAT32. Did you know FAT32 doesn’t accept files larger than 4GB? Now WHY a 500GB storage space is formatted in FAT32 is beyond me!
But now, I’ve got a dilemma.
1) if this was a new disk, I’d be able to reformat it (Right clicking the Drive in My Computer and Format)
2) but I got data, … luckily, on a Windows, you can convert your disk on the fly!
a) Run the command prompt as Administrator (Start->Command Prompt->Right-click->Run as Administrator)
b) At the command prompt, type
C:\Users\J>convert f: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
where f: is the drive of your external hard disk.
And …tada! Two hours of trying to figure out what the heck was wrong, and fixed in 2 minutes.
Sooooo typical of a computer problem for ya.
UPDATE: When prompted to “Enter the current volume label for drive [Drive Letter Here]“, if your drive has a label, you need to enter it (e.g. “My Passport” without the quotations). If your drive doesn’t have a label, just press the enter key for blank.
To find the volume label (if there is one specified), go to ‘My Computer’, right-click the drive you’re trying to convert, select Properties. In the General tab, the volume label is the name in the first field.
Topics: Uncategorized | 251 Comments »
Use the Highlighter
October 8th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Thank you so much…
I thought it was my laptop problem.
I was actually about to format my laptop instead.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
@Noir, glad to have helped (and prevented an unnecessary reformat, phew)!
October 19th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Thanks for the tip – just to confirm – this won’t erase any of the existing files on the HDD?
October 20th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
@kulfi, That’s right, it won’t erase any existing files.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
OH my god… so i just converted my 500gb IOMEGA with a bout 300gb of info to the NTFS and it said it was completed! I restarted my computer plugged my drive in again and NOW MY DRIVE ISN’t READING!!!!!!!
Help me!
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:18 pm
here’s my problem…
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6001]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Windows\system32>convert f: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Enter current volume label for drive F: My Book
Volume My Book created 5/2/2003 3:45 PM
Volume Serial Number is ———
Windows is verifying files and folders…
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
976,521,536 KB total disk space.
401,984 KB in 514 hidden files.
18,240 KB in 566 folders.
201,037,024 KB in 8,092 files.
775,064,256 KB are available.
32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.
30,516,298 total allocation units on disk.
24,220,758 allocation units available on disk.
This drive is dirty and cannot be converted. You will need to
clear the dirty bit on this drive by running CHKDSK /F or allowing
AUTOCHK to run on it the next time you reboot.
The conversion failed.
F: was not converted to NTFS
so it asked me if i wanted to restart it to run chkdsk on the volume, so i restarted, and it only checked drive c. im guessing it did not read the portable drive cause its thru usb connection? not sure. so what do i do? any ideas? google hasnt helped me on this one.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Thanks SO much for this post. I was wracking my brain trying to figure out why my 7GB stick couldn’t take a 4.37GB file until I found this. Worked like a charm
February 8th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Dude thanks for this post! I was about to format the disk
February 10th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Donell: I had the same problem, type this:
CHKDSK f: /F
to run the disk check on your drive (assuming it is f:), and windows will fix the problem. It worked for me!
Thanks again to the original poster, great fix!
February 18th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Brilliant article. This is just what I was looking for! Thanks.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:52 am
It worked perfectly! Thank you so much!!!
March 3rd, 2009 at 7:34 am
But, what volume do you put in for the it? It said, “Enter the current volume label for drive F:” What does that mean?
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:01 am
@Jake, the volume label is just the name for the partition/drive. It’s optional. You can enter in a name or just skip it by pressing the Enter key.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Thanks guys worked like a charm!
March 14th, 2009 at 2:59 am
Whats even better is I purchased a 500GB My Book and the new western digital media player since its supposed to be able to play mkv formats. This is commonly used for blue ray rips which means its well over 4 GB Which I can’t copy to the drive. I was going to reformat it originally but I’m not sure if the media player will see it then since I’m pretty sure its using a linux derivative for the its os.
March 15th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Hi,
I get this message: ‘C:\Users\J’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
Any help?
Thanx in advance.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Could someone please answer response #16?
My external hard drive is in G:\ and it keeps saying
“not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.”
Thanks.
March 30th, 2009 at 7:09 am
Used this fix on my newly purchased drive. I’ve been attempting since last night to copy files from my harddisk to my new WD My Book…
I stumbled upon this post through Google and followed the instructions… Voila! I converted the Fat32 to NTFS!
March 30th, 2009 at 9:41 am
@Vassilis / @Cory,
The C:\Users\J> happens to be my default path when I enter the command prompt. Yours may differ and it’s okay. Also, my drive was at f: so I typed F: (after convert), replace this with your own drive letter. e.g.
C:\YourOwnPathHere>convert g: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
Type the bolded, and replace the underlined as necessary.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I’m still having the response: ‘Dirty disk…..’ after I runned ‘CHKDSK /F’ many times…
What do I have to do?
April 1st, 2009 at 9:27 am
@kugvanv, just a guess, but I think you have a separate (additional) problem from what I have touched on here.
Try this link: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/6509-2-windows-dirty-disk
I’m not sure, but it looks like you might have to reformat it if all else fails.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Awesome thank you so much. Just one question, since it’ll be NTFS will i be able to read and write to the drive from my mac?
April 1st, 2009 at 11:32 pm
oh..it’s a usb hard drive by the way haha
April 28th, 2009 at 9:21 am
u type the name of the drive… like G: My Passport
May 1st, 2009 at 3:11 am
Beautiful
May 1st, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Grand! Thank you all for contributing!
May 1st, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Thanks for posting this. Was a real help. Just wanted to ask if I have to keep the convert file on the external hard disk or if I can delete it.
Thanks again!
May 7th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Thanks a lot, I was getting creasy trying to solve this issue. I’m wondering why they put this restriction on the size.
In my case, when appeared the volume label I had to put it, without was not working. If you open an explorer and search the driver it will appear the name of your label.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
worked wonders. I had to run the CHKDSK as well, but after that – no dramas.
Cheers.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Thhhaaannks a lot man you saved me almost a day ! hahua
thank you for your time !
May 27th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
this worked for me on vista saved a ton of time,i stumbled a little after putting the command, it asked for the drive or volume name,after several tries, i needed to put the original drive name,which is the name you see your drive under my computer (windows).after that about 7 minutes later the process was done. thx
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Original post by mattusmaximus
June 5th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Hi, cool post. I have been wondering about this topic,so thanks for writing.
June 12th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Argh, there were two comments on this post that got caught in my spam-deletion; I didn’t realize it until it was too late. So, to the commenters who said they an access denied problem:
“Access Denied as you do not have sufficient priviliges. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode.”
I believe you’re trying to run this on Vista. You need to run cmd.exe in Administrator mode. If it’s on your recent programs, right click on the Command Prompt icon and choose “Run as Administrator”. If you can’t find the icon, go to C:\windows\systems32 and look for the cmd.exe, right click on it, and choose “run as administrator”. The following steps in the original post should work now.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Juliana,
Thanks for this post. It saved me of lot of pain and time. Great stuff
June 20th, 2009 at 11:09 am
You are awesome. Had to run the diskcheck/error check through right-click>properties>tools, but after that it worked like a charm. Thank you.
June 24th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Thank you! This was very helpful!
June 24th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Holy Mother of Love! I have been trying to copy large files for weeks now to no avail. Thank you very much BroCephus!!!!!!!!!
July 24th, 2009 at 1:27 am
I tried converting it, but got this:
C:\Windows\system32>convert d: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Enter current volume label for drive D:
Volume created 19/7/2009 9:57 PM
Volume Serial Number is ——–
Windows is verifying files and folders…
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
312,492,320 KB total disk space.
96 KB in 3 hidden files.
320 KB in 9 folders.
22,642,272 KB in 1,710 files.
289,849,600 KB are available.
32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.
9,765,385 total allocation units on disk.
9,057,800 allocation units available on disk.
Determining disk space required for file system conversion…
Total disk space: 312568629 KB
Free space on volume: 289849600 KB
Space required for conversion: 456760 KB
Converting file system
Unable to notify other components that this volume has changed.
After this, my laptop treats it as a ‘raw’ disk with nothing on it, and I can’t reformat it at all. Is there any way I can fix this? Thanks in advance for any help!
July 24th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Worked beautifully. Thanks so much!!!
July 25th, 2009 at 12:21 am
Awesome! Thanks so much, this helped a lot moving a VM and not losing my other data.
July 29th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Thank you so much Beth at Nr 9.!
after typing that I finally got it to work after 2 hours of struggling
August 1st, 2009 at 5:24 am
I tried your solution but I get the error message:
Access denied as you do not have sufficient privileges
You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode.
When I right click on the command prompt I do not see an option Run as Administrator.
I only get – Mark, paste, select all, scroll, find
I have Windows Vista Home on my laptop and I am the only user.
Please assist.
August 1st, 2009 at 4:23 pm
thanks a lot, whew….. I was about to format the HDD…does anyone know why these $%^# don’t have a default as NTFS?
life saver.
August 2nd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Thanks…….keep doing….
August 3rd, 2009 at 5:32 am
Thanx for this. I’ve ran into this problem many times and finally decided today to google it.
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:43 am
@Kersi, it sounds like you are right-clicking on the command prompt window. What you need to do is right-click on the command prompt icon.
Take a look at this link for some screenshots: http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Windows-Vista-run-command-prompt-administrator-t146674.html
August 13th, 2009 at 10:54 am
This worked really fine..
im running vista..
and an External HD Western Digital 500G
little trouble but everything worked…
first it had to be inovoked in elevated mode..
so i just did the right click on the cmd.exe and ran it as
administrator..
then it said that the volume was on use
and that it was gonna try to shut it down..
and it gave the notice saying something like….
ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID
so i typed Y for yes ..
and waited ..
and it was all done…
thanks for the post…
it really helped…
August 15th, 2009 at 7:43 am
thnx heaps juliana..i hv always had this prblem wid WDs n i used to wonder wht was it..thnx agn.cheers.
August 21st, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Juliana, I wanna reconfirm the fact that formatting my 320 gb hard disk wont lead 2 loss of info on the hard disk…actually i read sum other articles whaich said that u need to empty the drive b4 formatting else u lose all ur info…
August 24th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Shubhro, well, personally, I did not lose my data.
However, I have to say that all sorts of things can go wrong when we format/convert/upgrade our gadgets, so it’s always better to take precautions. Why don’t you backup your data first before you try the commands?
September 14th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
thanks juliana!!! it worked liked a charm.. thanks again for helping me solve the problem in less than 30 mins!!
September 16th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
how to get rid in FAT SYSTEM
September 17th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Thank you!!! Worked perfectly!!!!
September 19th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Thanks a million! I was wondering why my 16Gb pendrive can’t take a 5Gb file, and you solved my problem in a minute. Good job!
December 1st, 2009 at 11:58 am
Thx . i was actually pondering whether to reformat before i saw . totally a livesaver
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:54 am
i tried this with my 1TB WD external drive.. at first i was reluctant to follow the instructions but it seems many have tried it already.
cross-fingers!!!
worked perfectly!
thanks for sharing this info!
mabuhay!
December 7th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Worked like charm on my 500GB Freecom. Thanks!
December 9th, 2009 at 1:02 am
I realize I’m being redundant, but this really does work! Thanks!
December 10th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Very nice work. Thanks it helped a lot. Comment #9 was helpful too because i had the same problem. Thanks again! >=D
December 15th, 2009 at 4:04 am
This worked fine for me on the copying side of things but now my HD isn’t recognised by my TV or XBox 360. Any idea how to revert the drive to how it was before or solve this issue?
Thanks.
December 16th, 2009 at 12:56 am
thanks, now i can store my iso discs lol
no problem from me
December 17th, 2009 at 3:52 am
Thanks so much had to do a disk check it took a while because of the size (1tb) but it was still a breeze.
December 26th, 2009 at 12:40 am
Cheers, now my hard drive isnt being recognised you stupid zionist pig dogs cock sucking whore
December 26th, 2009 at 12:41 am
OK, i may have over reacted
December 29th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Hey I just wanted to say thank you sooo much Juliana!!
Just got my WD TB HDD and realized it needed formatting too late. This helped me tremendously!!
December 31st, 2009 at 8:48 am
OMFG! Thanks very much! SUPER BIG help…i was like WTF is wrong with this HDD! but glad i googled this page!
December 31st, 2009 at 5:36 pm
AWESOME
thankyou so much, I had 1 terabyte drive and was loosing it, bloody fat 32, I so forgot that fat32 had a file size limitation.
thankyou thankyou thankyou
January 6th, 2010 at 10:11 am
I love you.. worked stellar and I was crunched for time.. thank you thank you thank you!
January 17th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Thanks you ROCK..!!
January 24th, 2010 at 5:22 am
Thanks juliana, i owe you one hour.
January 27th, 2010 at 4:32 am
Brilliant, just amazing!
January 27th, 2010 at 5:08 am
Thanks man your a legend…. i was downloading a large file only to find it wouldnt go on my Freecom hard drive… so thanks a lot mate
January 29th, 2010 at 12:51 am
Thanks a lot! Found all the stuff i needed on one page keep up the good posts
February 9th, 2010 at 8:34 am
Thank-You, thank you!!!
February 11th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Brilliant thx! Nice and to the point info
February 14th, 2010 at 2:05 am
Tks so much Juliana!!! Perfect!!!
My log.
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Windows\system32>convert e: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Enter current volume label for drive E: SAMSUNG
Volume Serial Number is 15DA-1B72
Windows is verifying files and folders…
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
488,264,768 KB total disk space.
47,488 KB in 347 hidden files.
27,264 KB in 848 folders.
37,718,912 KB in 13,460 files.
450,471,072 KB are available.
32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.
15,258,274 total allocation units on disk.
14,077,221 allocation units available on disk.
Determining disk space required for file system conversion…
Total disk space: 488384000 KB
Free space on volume: 450471072 KB
Space required for conversion: 691665 KB
Converting file system
Conversion complete
February 24th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Thank you so much!! You solved my problem with this simple step. Thanks again.
February 27th, 2010 at 6:41 am
People like you Juliana are the ones that makes the difference. Look how many people you helped! Thanks for posting this, like everyone else it helped me a lot!!!
March 4th, 2010 at 12:52 am
Agree with Renato. 2 THUMBS UP for Juliana!!! solved a FAT32 problem for me too. Thanks a lot!
March 10th, 2010 at 12:08 am
Worked like a charm, thanks so much.
March 10th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
thank you so much JULIANA really worked for me too.
March 12th, 2010 at 10:06 am
Thanks a lot Juliana
it worked pretty nice
I just type
convert g: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity on Command Prompt
then
my passport
took few minutes and that is it.
March 18th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
thanks alot worked like a charm.. btw you just need to type
“convert f: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity”
the default directory like C:users doesnt matter..
March 19th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Thanks a bundle…it worked like charm and now i’m able to copy large files to my portable drive.
Love it.
March 28th, 2010 at 2:34 am
Thank you so much for this fix! I followed some commenters’ advice about leaving out C:users and it worked perfectly.
April 9th, 2010 at 12:42 am
Thnx, man, so simple and quick, ur a genius!
April 9th, 2010 at 11:17 pm
Amazing.
April 14th, 2010 at 3:28 am
How long does it take? Mine’s been stuck on ‘converting file system’ for ages!
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Thank you so much for this post! Worked great with no problems at all!
April 28th, 2010 at 11:52 am
Thank U, Thank U, Thank U!!!!!!!!!
April 30th, 2010 at 4:52 am
This works REALLY well to be honest, i had reservations at first cos
1. i had to cd c:\ to change to c:\ drive cos i had no administrator to do it on
2. it said i had a dirty hard drive!!! so had to error check it
THEN IT WORKED!
nice one.
April 30th, 2010 at 5:33 am
HOW DO I DELELTE STUFF OFF MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE NOW? since i changed it to NTFS files wont delete
April 30th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
worked just fine first time, thanks very much for the information…
April 30th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
OMG.. i cant believe how easy this was!! I’ve been stuck in this dilemma for so long and never wanted to format my external hard drive because I didn’t want to lose data. this fixed it in a minute and was able to put a 20 gig blu ray movie on there with no problem. Thank you so much!!
May 1st, 2010 at 7:44 am
THANK YOU!! I am a totally non-techie and was terrified of doing this esp going into DOS and using things I didn’t understand, but if you follow the instructions it’s fine. Worked a treat in less than 5 mins. I’ve now finally backed up my large Outlook PST file for the first time in weeks and am relieved. Thank you so much for this and for writing the instructions in clear language
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Thanks so much worked FIRST TIME. Brilliant!!
Cheers
Andre
May 11th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Thanks a lot juliana.
I have been having this problem for months, I didn’t try or think that might need to format my laptop. But it stopped me from the normal backup for specific file, until I come to your post.
Many thanks again, now I can contiue my normal backups.
May 13th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Thank you so much Juliana. It was really helpful.
Regards,
Krish
May 16th, 2010 at 6:29 am
Thank you so much! Your so awesome!
May 17th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Wonderful tip. I was trying to backup my outlook data, and a search on the net, and your tip solved the problem in about 10 minutes. Thanks a ton!
May 18th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Shot brew, hectic stuff, worked 100%.
May 21st, 2010 at 4:44 am
Fantastic! Worked first time
took me 5 minutes, perfect!
May 23rd, 2010 at 5:31 pm
it says: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
May 31st, 2010 at 7:04 am
Thanks so MUCH!!!
Worked great!!!!
I noticed all the posts and realized you helped a lot of people…again THANK YOU (-: !!!!!!!
June 1st, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Thank you very much for the extremely helpful information you provided. I surely would have been lost without it. Thanks again! My WD 1TB MyBook extental hard drive & 16GB travel flash drive went from being FAT32 to NTFS in no time thanks to your and the others’ instructions. Have a wonderful week & take care of yourselves! : – ) Ken
June 2nd, 2010 at 4:05 am
It worked just great!! Thank you very much!!
June 3rd, 2010 at 12:18 am
Hi, ive tried doing this with my 1tb hard drive, the problem im having is that when i try to convert i get the “drive is dirty” problem that others have had. the problem comes when chkdsk doesnt fix it as it doesnt find any problems. Any suggestions?
June 15th, 2010 at 11:34 am
Juliana! you’re a genious!!! I’m a big fan of yours!!!! *cheers*
June 23rd, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Very impressed, Worked easily Thank you.
June 25th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
My problem:
My pen drive has a 16gb space.but the data must not be tranfer.because my pen drive is fat format. then i can change FAT TO NTFS then my file had transfer to the pen drive.
June 30th, 2010 at 10:59 pm
I use the convert command to covert a FAT32 partition to NTFS. After “Determining disk space required for file system conversion… “, I got the error message “The conversion failed. / D: was not converted to NTFS”. But, chkdsk didn’t find any problem and there is more than 50% free space on this partition. No clue at all… any other possibility?
July 16th, 2010 at 12:19 am
brilliant, only for this i would be clueless as to the problem, thanks
July 19th, 2010 at 6:20 am
so i found that windows is a little different but these sites helped
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/format-usb-ntfs/
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Convert-a-hard-disk-or-partition-to-NTFS-format
July 19th, 2010 at 6:22 am
oops i meant windows vista lol
July 19th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Excellent!! it work´s for my 16GB pendrive, and resolves the same trouble. Thanks!!!
July 20th, 2010 at 1:47 am
Just wanted to say thanks for the tip.
I have a My Book Essential Edition 500GB that had the same error.
converting the file system to NTFS did it.
Thanks
July 24th, 2010 at 4:04 am
broooooooooooooo thanks thanks man, it worked, thing was i downloaded bluray quality movie and could not send it to usb also to hard drive. ps3 does not recognize any other format than FAT this is y i was wanting to copy to usb. it all worked thanks again man awesome
CHEERS!!
July 29th, 2010 at 3:03 am
You are amazing for this! Thank you!
August 3rd, 2010 at 9:52 am
Dude…you rock! Seriously. Thanks.
August 3rd, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Thanks so much for this article, i thought my 16GB USB-stick was broken because it wouldn’t accept a 4GB file. Windows certainly is quite odd at times..
August 7th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Thanks! This has helped me nicely! Love your work! =)
August 13th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Thanks for the post. But i am getting a message that “conversion from FAT32 volume to NFS voume is not available” can someone provide solution.
August 13th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Hi guys, its my mistake instead of ntfs, i have put nfs in the command prompt. Many thanks for the useful post.
August 16th, 2010 at 3:26 am
Thank you! The world becomes better with posts like this)
August 23rd, 2010 at 1:12 am
This is a miracle!!
August 23rd, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Thanks man so much… I think i can speak for all of us torwards Juls that we would be screwed if it wasnt for people like yourself
Thanks!
August 25th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
I was like WTF i cant fit a 4.32GB Into a sandisk with 8GB O_O …. but this did the trick =D
August 27th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Thanx
August 29th, 2010 at 11:43 am
11:08pm – I have been trying to save simple 10GB files to my 1TB external hard drive and I kept getting this annoying message. As I type this I’m doing the converting process. Here’s hoping nothing gets deleted, because I couldn’t save it anywhere else before the converting, (that’s the reason why I have the HD in the first place. So!
11:13pm – It worked perfectly. Didn’t lose anything. THANK GOD!! And thank you original poster. This helps me out A LOT with my job. Thanks again!
August 31st, 2010 at 7:05 am
This Worked Perfectly. Seriously thank you. I still dont understand though why a 1 tb hard drive would be formatted for max 4gb files
August 31st, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Hey i tried this but i get
“Invalid Parameter – /nosecurity ”
how do i fix this?
September 3rd, 2010 at 11:22 am
Thank you so much man.
September 5th, 2010 at 12:21 am
Thanks!!!! Finally I resolved this problem
September 7th, 2010 at 7:38 am
thank you! i am converting my vhs tapes into files and had no way of getting them off my laptop to my terrabite! took a leap of faith – but it didn’t wipe my data, thank you so much!
September 10th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Amazing my toshiba hdd has now changed to NTFS format. Now i can copy….
Thanks……
September 10th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
This is truly amazing.. WOW WOW WOW WOW
September 16th, 2010 at 4:59 am
THANK YOU! it works!!!!
September 16th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
Brilliant post. Thanks for taking the time.
September 17th, 2010 at 12:36 am
Thanks for the post, I had to input the command twice, but what a lifesaver!
September 21st, 2010 at 2:05 am
Was Trynna Figure Out How To Fix This For 2 Days. Thanks a Bunch, Juliana! =)
September 24th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Many thanks! Got it figured out between your post and the responses.
September 25th, 2010 at 5:35 am
Thanks it worked!
September 28th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
I’m having about every issue listed above, and I feel like I’ve tried every solution. Can someone PLEASE help? Here is where I am now on the Command Prompt screen…
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Windows\system32>convert J: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
‘C:\Windows\system32′ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
C:\Windows\system32>convert J: fs:ntfs /nosecurity
Invalid Parameter – fs:ntfs
September 30th, 2010 at 12:47 am
I’ll thought my drive wast ext3, but still fat formatted..
after backing up this vm to local (ex4) drive, i’ll see if this is indeed my problem..
tnx anyway for putting me on the trail..
October 1st, 2010 at 12:50 am
thank you sooo much
October 1st, 2010 at 1:49 am
@Andrea, that’s a really, really weird error message. “C:\Windows\system32′ not recognized??? Perhaps you should double-check your PATH variable? (Also, the convert.exe SHOULD be in windows\system32 but the error message about the path is puzzling. )
October 1st, 2010 at 3:19 pm
you are awesome…..:D
October 5th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Hey, i have filled up my drive almost 50%. Kan i still convert? without the files being deleted?
Right now i just zip my larger files in to 700 mb chunks and transfer, then unzip.
October 8th, 2010 at 4:36 am
thank you Juliana
October 9th, 2010 at 3:50 am
omg, you saved me a day’s work. Thank you so much!! Worked like a charm!
October 11th, 2010 at 1:50 am
To Andrea (Post #144):
Is your drive letter called “J”? If not, right click on the drive you want to convert, select “Properties” and find out what YOUR drive letter is and use that instead of “J”.
October 12th, 2010 at 12:42 am
thx, it works:D
October 12th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
worked like a charm, thanks, i have been searching for this. i didn’t need to backup the file, and i just need 15 minute to settle this with 1.5TB hard disk.
October 15th, 2010 at 4:48 am
Although you gt a million thanks .. but i cant leave without saying it!! Thanks you so much!!!!!
October 17th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
great! it worked well for me, but had to take afew minutes to perfect it…..thanks all the same
October 22nd, 2010 at 10:06 am
Thanks! It really helped!!
October 26th, 2010 at 10:59 am
Thanks man a real help!
October 27th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Thanks, this worked perfectly and save me a lot of trouble..& time!
October 28th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
[...] select Properties. In the General tab, the volume label is the name in the first field. From TwoGeeks (No Ratings Yet) Loading [...]
November 8th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Send a bunch of thanks. Keep posting n helping people like me
Oh and may I ask for your permission to link this page?
November 11th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
THANKS A LOT
November 16th, 2010 at 5:02 am
THANK YOU.
Was so scared it to do it but i did it, worked flawlessly!
November 17th, 2010 at 11:19 pm
Brilliant!
Was trying to add a 13GB file to my 320GB external HDD, couldn’t make sense of it.
Your guide was great.
Thank you.
November 19th, 2010 at 2:02 am
thanks bro.. it works!!! just bought samsung s2 1tb… thought its the hd problem..
November 19th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Hi,
I had the same problem with my hitachi x500 (500Gb).
It wasn’t even 1/10 full and I wanted to copy a movie 6.55 Gb (Blu-Ray). So I checked in the manual (comes as a flash programme in the drive). There is a link to this site:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456984.aspx
There, it says:
‘To convert a volume to NTFS from the command prompt
1.
Open Command Prompt. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
2.
In the command prompt window, type: convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs
I did so, and…
(well, I’m doing all of this right now, so:)
To be continued…
(In approx. 15 minutes!)
But your article is still great!
(Even though it never worked, no matter how many times I’ve tried, but hey! Ces’t la vie!)
(And no, I don’t speak French…)
November 19th, 2010 at 11:36 pm
I have forgot to make an example before, so:
-open cmd
-type:
convert J: :/fs:ntfs
-press enter
-enter the name your drive is called, when you open My Computer. For me, that’s
HITACHI
-close all programs using that drive (even My computer,…)
-press enter in cmd
-wait
It tells you
-how many folders you have
-how much space the drive has
-how much space is available
…
You need(!!!!) to have some space free (for my 500Gb it took 600000 bites)
November 19th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
So, I made the backup and deleted it, because I didn’t need it!
All is okay, so you can do it too!
Good luck!
Jari! (name from Finland, I live in Slovenia!
November 24th, 2010 at 12:53 am
Thanks! I was about to format my HD
December 1st, 2010 at 3:20 am
Hi again!
I’m sorry for this:
-comment 167
-line 4
The correct thing is this:
convert J: /fs:ntfs
Sorry!!
December 3rd, 2010 at 7:19 am
Excellent post thanks! Been trying to sort this for a while now but problem solved
December 6th, 2010 at 12:52 am
Thanks People. My Prob solved.
December 9th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Fantastic….solves the problem of files over 4GB being’too big for destination drive’ in a matter of minutes..well done Juliana,what a lifesaver!!
December 11th, 2010 at 12:42 am
Awesome! I’ve got a 1TB WD elements drive and worked a treat. Thank you!
December 12th, 2010 at 12:32 am
THANKS!!! You just saved me a lot of time.
December 15th, 2010 at 12:39 am
Excellent fix, moving a 10gb avi now possible, thank you
December 15th, 2010 at 4:14 am
This worked beautifully! Thanks!
December 15th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
I just performed this action on my brand new Samsung S2 1Tb external Hard-disk, and it worked perfectly! All my files are still on the disk, and it still works as a charm.
Thank you very very much for this highly usefull article! (Y)
You’re the best!
December 20th, 2010 at 10:11 am
Howdy, was able to to run through the steps to make my external HD able to receive files bigger than 4gig… But now, my WD media player wont play the files.. You can select a file to play, but it just stays as a black screen or the blue “thinking” type icon on the screen goes round and round.. But it won’t play.
Hope that makes sense….
Any solutions out there?
December 24th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
hey guys, im having some problems.
At the command prompt, type
C:\Users\J>convert f: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
nosecurity?
my external harddrive is called 60GB HDD.
can someone help me to fix this problem! what would i try in the command prompt cuz im trying everything n it doesnt seem to work for me
December 24th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Like Tewi – I too now have an inaccessible raw disk after the convert.
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\administrator.SWT>convert g: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Enter current volume label for drive G:
An incorrect volume label was entered for this drive.
C:\Users\administrator.SWT>convert g: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Enter current volume label for drive G: Hitachi
Volume HITACHI created 19/09/2009 19:32
Volume Serial Number is 1AF9-1F54
Windows is verifying files and folders…
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
312,492,320 KB total disk space.
493,408 KB in 3,512 hidden files.
278,304 KB in 8,685 folders.
137,404,608 KB in 98,698 files.
174,315,968 KB are available.
32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.
9,765,385 total allocation units on disk.
5,447,374 allocation units available on disk.
Determining disk space required for file system conversion…
Total disk space: 312568641 KB
Free space on volume: 174315968 KB
Space required for conversion: 593226 KB
Converting file system
Unable to notify other components that this volume has changed.
December 25th, 2010 at 1:55 am
try reloading the drive in device manager > storage
December 27th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
thank you so much…really useful
January 4th, 2011 at 11:21 pm
Thanks for this great article and the other commets Nice work am very happy saved me a lot of time always people out there to give an extra hand
January 6th, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Thank you very very much for this article. It was a real life saver!
January 8th, 2011 at 2:38 am
never knew. thank you so much
January 10th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
Does anyone know how to disable write protection on a transcend JetFlash v10 4GB?
January 11th, 2011 at 11:05 am
gr8 job mate
January 14th, 2011 at 7:39 pm
Thanks man!!! It worked!!! =D
January 22nd, 2011 at 5:05 am
I have tried to do this twice. I ran chkdsk inbetween, no problems. I got this message both times:
Determining disk space required for file system conversion…
Total disk space: 732571976 KB
Free space on volume: 606192384 KB
Space required for conversion: 1248557 KB
Converting file system
The conversion failed.
G: was not converted to NTFS
Anyone provide any help? Thanks.
January 24th, 2011 at 2:29 pm
I specified the problem I had in the previous post. I was attempting to convert an external usb hard drive on with a computer running Windows 7. It wouldn’t work. I tried again on a computer running Windows XP, and I left off the “/nosecurity”, and it worked fine. My external hard drive is now NTFS and still contains all of the data. So if it doesn’t work for you, those are two things to try.
February 14th, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Thanks a lot, it works perfectly for me.
February 17th, 2011 at 11:11 pm
Wow, thanks a bunch. This whole blog helped out a ton. Apreciate it guys.
February 18th, 2011 at 10:53 pm
pure awesomeness.
easy and breezy
February 22nd, 2011 at 11:09 am
Great tip… thx, saved me hours of research…
February 22nd, 2011 at 6:42 pm
After attempting to convert my external hard to ntfs, i get the message that my drive is dirty and i have to clear the dirty bit by running “CHKDSK /F”. I did that a few times and i notice that it only checks C drive (correct me if i’m wrong). The drive still won’t covert after running CHKDSK!
So, i followed what Beth said in comment #9 and type CHKDSK f: /F instead. However, i get a message “Cannot open volume for direct access”.
Anyone knows how to solve this?
February 26th, 2011 at 8:46 pm
thanks it works perfectly in my 1TB external hard drive.
March 6th, 2011 at 8:24 am
This is the best website ever — I never thought I was going to solve this problem — thanks!
March 6th, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Thnx mate..worked perfectly
March 10th, 2011 at 10:57 am
Brilliant! Many thanks.
March 12th, 2011 at 1:16 pm
hey mate. absolute legend. cheers heaps!
March 12th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
@ljfarleyp: The problem is that for some reason your drive isn’t being “unmounted” (virtually ejected so that it’s not “in use” by Windows or programs). Apparently “chkdsk /x” (without the quotes) will force the drive to unmount if it doesn’t do so on its own. I’ve never had to use it, so I can’t confirm whether it’ll help.
@Jeff: I’m not familiar with WD media players, but most multimedia devices I’ve seen don’t support NTFS at all, so you might have to reformat it as FAT32 (backing up all the files first, of course). I’m guessing that the big files you’re trying to copy over are video files, so your best bet is to either use video editing software to compress the image, or find a utility to split large videos into smaller playable video files (maybe one per few chapters, if it’s a movie).
Nicely written article, and was definitely helpful. Helped jog my memory of “why the **** is this DVD image not copying? I have tons of free space!” Thank you
March 15th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
OMG Thank you soooo much…. i wish i was as intelligent as you MR…or MAM
March 19th, 2011 at 11:06 pm
u’r AWE-freakin-SOME!!
this works like magic..
April 5th, 2011 at 10:56 pm
thanks so much for this article, not only can i transfer all my large files now but the transfers seem to be faster too
April 19th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Great post!! Saved me so much hassle. #YouAreLoved
April 22nd, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Dude, you saved me so much time.
Thank you from my heart.
April 28th, 2011 at 9:53 pm
thanks! really helped!
May 5th, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Thanks for this, does this work the other way around? i just convereted to ntfs to allow a larger single file transfer but then realised my PS3 won’t read ntfs drives. So now i need it converted back.
I do have a back up HDD so it’s no problem to format it properly but if this works in reverse then great. i tried typing in convert g: ntfs:fs but it didn’t work..
May 20th, 2011 at 1:33 am
thanx man.
it solved my problem.
ur gr8
May 28th, 2011 at 11:34 pm
You are fabulous! I have spent hours trawling the net to find a solution on how to transfer all my home movies from my laptop onto my external hard drive!
I had a lot of data already on the external hard drive so didn’t want to lose any.
Running the command prompt to convert the external hard disk worked a treat without losing any saved data.
Thank you so much for all the help on here guys.
YOU ROCK !!!
June 11th, 2011 at 4:37 am
Thank you! x
June 14th, 2011 at 2:31 am
sweet!
June 20th, 2011 at 7:49 am
AWESOME!!!!!
June 21st, 2011 at 9:37 am
Excellent, this works a treat!
June 22nd, 2011 at 11:40 pm
You guys must be some kinda geniuses of something! (Of course it took a lot longer than 2 minutes to do 1TB)
June 24th, 2011 at 7:32 am
Thanks sooo much, it worked perfectly!
July 4th, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Thank you so much for this tutorial, it saved my hard disk and my work and my time! Though I had problems at first, I just followed the additional commands on the comments it works like a charm!
July 7th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
try this site—–> http://adf.ly/214JU
July 10th, 2011 at 1:25 am
Thank you
July 20th, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Thanks man
This works well….
July 29th, 2011 at 3:07 am
Thanks. worked like a dream.
August 1st, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Worked Like a charm
thank you
August 3rd, 2011 at 2:44 am
Extremely impressed, Thank you so much
August 14th, 2011 at 7:36 pm
@JULIANA – you are a champ. thanks it worked.
August 17th, 2011 at 11:13 am
Thank you.was trying to copy wii isos and came up with that stupity. Was so mad. But u brighten it all up. Thank you.
August 23rd, 2011 at 6:26 pm
dude u save timeeeeeeee…….thnx
August 25th, 2011 at 10:32 pm
@Juliana – I don’t usually respond to threads for simple fixes but you saved me from ripping my hair out!!! I was simply trying to back up my rather large .pst Outlook files to transfer to new system and then i encountered this issue when backing up onto USB drive…I am soooo grateful!!
August 26th, 2011 at 9:14 pm
Thanks a million. A solved my issues!!!
September 6th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
Thank u so much… it helped me a lot… n thnx 2 google 2…
September 8th, 2011 at 12:15 am
Thank u so much…..:)
September 13th, 2011 at 2:47 am
for windows 7 users…right click on the disk -> format -> file system -> NTFS……then format it…problem solved.
September 15th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
Hey thanks a ton for this post really helps
September 17th, 2011 at 9:41 pm
finally i can move my big files to ext hard disk thanks for the post…………
September 18th, 2011 at 6:57 am
Ok, spent a good hour if not more on trying to work it, all I can say is, thank god for this website!
Has saved me so much headache, for once i actually bothered backing up my HD, but did not lose my data.
I had to do a chkdsk on the drive before I could follow the method, and it has worked wonders.
i have now abled to transfer a 18gb file to the HD which is amazing!
Thanks alot!!
September 24th, 2011 at 6:26 am
Thanks man saved a lot of time and mess
September 26th, 2011 at 6:17 am
You should participate in a contest for among the best blogs on the web. I’ll advocate this web site!
September 30th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Did you know FAT32 doesn’t accept files larger than 4GB? <<<<<< thanks for info,i format with NTFS,it works fine now
October 3rd, 2011 at 10:43 pm
thank you man…
October 6th, 2011 at 7:13 am
AWESOME!!! You rock!!! Read 3 forums that just said it was impossible before getting to this one… It’s weird though, this seems to happen randomly on my hard drives… Last week I transferred 30GB in a zip folder, now it was bugged with a 7 GB file…
Thank you so much!!
October 18th, 2011 at 12:15 am
Thanx a lot buddy .. May you get all happiness of the world that you wish …. You have saved hell lot of time for me to troubleshoot …
November 24th, 2011 at 8:41 pm
hi ppl,
Do i have to format my external before running the steps on cmd?
November 24th, 2011 at 8:44 pm
and how do i know whether my drive has a label or not?
November 24th, 2011 at 8:52 pm
Just figured it out!! Im so happy now!! Let the copy begin!! Thanks Juliana!
December 24th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
thanks Juliana!! God Bless You
January 2nd, 2012 at 4:55 pm
Couldn’t put a 6.5gb file on an 8gb flash drive, even after formating.
This worked, thanks a lot.
January 4th, 2012 at 11:23 am
Thanks, I was about to split a large file into two parts! Works great!
January 18th, 2012 at 8:41 pm
this is great help. thanks ! !:)
January 25th, 2012 at 9:34 am
Total bad ass! The mission is not impossible any more !
January 25th, 2012 at 5:33 pm
So excited!!!!Thank you thank you thank you soooooooooooo much!!!
January 30th, 2012 at 3:42 am
Thank you so very much!