Techie help...I am desperate!?

[willowstar]

Hello everyone

I am a PC user who knows very little about how they work, I just rely on everything being plug and play and usually all goes well. Until today. I bought an external hard drive because we are going away for two weeks and in my usual pessimistic way, I am planning for in case we get burgled...so I want to back up my photos and music and store the external hard drive at work.

so. I bought a Freecom Ext Hard Disk, 500GB. And I can't work out how to use it. Supposedly, you just plug it in and that is that. But...when I go into my computer, manage, devise management it says that the file system is CDFS and that there is 0% free room. On Amazon, several reviews say you should change the file managment system but I can't change anything on mine...I just click on everything and nothing happens. I am clueless. Does anyone know anything about this, or can you direct me to a forum where someone might be able to help??? Hate feeling so useless

[BrideXIII]

when you go to my computer? can you see the drive listed at all?

from a quick search it looks like you need to reformat the drive to NTFS.

never done an external before, but normal drives you would do by right clicking on the drive in question and picking format, it should then ask you if you want to convert/format to NTFS.
can you also tell me what operating system you have, xp vista etc?

full instructions are here, read them through very carefully first and ask any questions you have before starting.


http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...nced/ntfs.mspx

[willowstar]

Hello Bride :-) thanks very much for your reponse.

well, I am stunned. I read on a forum someone describing similar probs and it turned out that they were using the wrong adaptor. So, I unearthed a different adaptor, plugged it in and hey presto, now it seems to be working. I am really surprised because with the old adaptor the light was on and the computer could clearly see it, but now it says the file system is FAT32 and I am happily copying over all my photos.

I read about the changing it to NTFS thing. What is the advantage of changing to that? Now that I have started copying everything in the FAT32 system will it make sence to change? And how do you learn about all of this stuff? I am on xp.

[BrideXIII]

FAT32 is fine, NTFS is faster, but for what you are using it for FAT32 will be ok, you can always convert the whole lot later if need be . seeing as you want to get this done in a hurry and have already started copying stuff over stay with what you are doing for now.

learned it all the hard way but remember if you ask the right questions, google is your friend

[willowstar]

thanks, I am really surprised that just using the wrong adaptor could make such a difference.

love google and love this site, always friendly people who try to help. marvellous!