Running disk utility on external hard drive, moving BIG file to external

[YukonCornelious]

Will running the 'repair disk' disk utility on an external drive screw up any of the files on my external hard drive?


I only want to run it because I can't transfer a file from my HD to the external...it's a 6 gig video file in quicktime format, and I'm getting 'error 1309', which I understand is related to file size on FAT32 format. I know it's a huge file, but I've moved others to the external that are over 20 gigs with no problems (iMovie projects, etc). Anything I can do to get this file moved to the external?

Thanks.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

The FAT32 format will not allow you to store a file larger than 4GB (technically, 4GB minus 2 bytes), no matter what. The actual FAT32 format scheme cannot address files larger than that.

The reason the 6GB iMovie project worked is because the iMovie "file" isn't really a file at all -- it's really a folder with a bunch of smaller files inside of it, none of which were larger than 4GB. It simply appears in Mac OS X as one, large, monolithic file (but it's really not one, single file).

[YukonCornelious]

OK that makes sense, thanks. Another question then. This quicktime movie is an exported iMovie movie that I made. It's something like 33 minutes long and just over 6 gigs. Within iMovie, can I chop it in half and export half of it at a time to make 2 quicktime movies that are 3 gigs each? Or does it have to be two separate iMovie projects to do that?

Thanks.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

I haven't used iMovie much, but I would assume you could do just that. You may be able to keep the iMovie project as one, large movie, and just export the first half and then the second half -- that way, you wouldn't have to "split" the iMovie project... you could leave it as one, big project, but just export it in two parts (meaning your iMovie project would still be one movie, but you would export in two halves).

Is there a particular reason you're keeping your external drive in the FAT32 format? Do you need to use the drive with Windows machines as well? If not, and if you only use the drive with Macs, I would highly suggest backing up all the data from the external drive, reformatting it as HFS+, then moving all the data back. That way, you wouldn't have problems with the file size limit and the drive would be in a more "Mac-friendly" and "Mac-native" format.

[YukonCornelious]

I formatted in FAT32 because I do (rarely) want to transfer files back and forth to work (PC's). I recently got a fairly big flash drive and can now use this for that task, so reformatting is a possibility. Reformatting will delete everything off the drive, right?

...now to figure out how to back up 300gigs of data without buying another external.

[YukonCornelious]

Another thought...I'm thinking of running bootcamp and Windows XP just for a couple of programs for work that aren't available for Mac OS. If I reformat the external as HFS+ will it be impossible to use the external drive with files from Windows? As I understand I'd have to partition part of the drive as FAT32 for files from Windows, and the rest of it as HFS+, but I wouldn't be able to transfer files from Windows to Mac, right? I know just enough to be dangerous, but I don't REALLY understand...

[ElDiabloConCaca]

If you use BootCamp, then no, you can't access the HFS+ formatted drive from Windows (without installing this: http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/).

If you use a solution such as Parallels or VMWare's Fusion to run Windows in a virtualized environment, then you can always set up the HFS+ formatted external drive as a "shared" drive and access it from Windows like you would a network volume. I do this with Parallels, and it works just fine (although not perfectly all the time). With Parallels and VMWare's Fusion, you can also drag-and-drop files from Windows directly to the Mac desktop and vice-versa.