Hi guys
This post doesn't relate to W7 per se but I'm putting it here since it could be of use whilst you are testing.
Hopefully everybody is making backups and I know some of you use large USB external drives. These are generally formatted with FAT32 and the problem now arises if you want to cut and paste files larger than 2GB.
(My typical backup image is around 14 - 18 GB for a W7 X-64 image) .
Some backup programs will split files into 2GB chunks so you can copy on to DVD etc. I prefer to keep a large file as I'm using external USB's for backup -- saves also having to insert a multiple of DVD's on restore (you can do unattended restores etc when using a single USB drive), and saves also problems when you insert DVD's in the wrong order.
There is an old XP command which is still present even on W7.
Just go into a command prompt and type convert X /fs :ntfs where X is the drive letter e.g F
The program will ask you for the volume name before continuing so get that before you start (right mouse click, properties).
If you still stick to FAT32 because you share the volumes with LINUX - most Linux distros have had read / write to NTFS for a long time now.
To mount an ntfs volume in linux for read /write (it uses the FUSE module - installed in modern kernels by default)
just type (as root -- su) something like
mount -t ntfs-3g -o rw /devname /directory and you can then read and write to your NTFS files.
the -t -ntfs-3g parameter tells the mount command that it's an NTFS file system that is going to be mounted.
There's no point in sticking to FAT32 anymore especially for large files.
OK this isn't a Windows 7 post but hopefully it's of use to people swapping USB drives between Linux and Windows systems.
Cheers
jimbo
This post doesn't relate to W7 per se but I'm putting it here since it could be of use whilst you are testing.
Hopefully everybody is making backups and I know some of you use large USB external drives. These are generally formatted with FAT32 and the problem now arises if you want to cut and paste files larger than 2GB.
(My typical backup image is around 14 - 18 GB for a W7 X-64 image) .
Some backup programs will split files into 2GB chunks so you can copy on to DVD etc. I prefer to keep a large file as I'm using external USB's for backup -- saves also having to insert a multiple of DVD's on restore (you can do unattended restores etc when using a single USB drive), and saves also problems when you insert DVD's in the wrong order.
There is an old XP command which is still present even on W7.
Just go into a command prompt and type convert X /fs :ntfs where X is the drive letter e.g F
The program will ask you for the volume name before continuing so get that before you start (right mouse click, properties).
If you still stick to FAT32 because you share the volumes with LINUX - most Linux distros have had read / write to NTFS for a long time now.
To mount an ntfs volume in linux for read /write (it uses the FUSE module - installed in modern kernels by default)
just type (as root -- su) something like
mount -t ntfs-3g -o rw /devname /directory and you can then read and write to your NTFS files.
the -t -ntfs-3g parameter tells the mount command that it's an NTFS file system that is going to be mounted.
There's no point in sticking to FAT32 anymore especially for large files.
OK this isn't a Windows 7 post but hopefully it's of use to people swapping USB drives between Linux and Windows systems.
Cheers
jimbo
