"Ian R" Ian wrote in message
...
Good morning everyone!

I just bought a 160 GB external HDD for backups on my WXP Home machine (
the
HDD is connected using USB 2.0). I have read in previous posts that I
must
change the file system on the new drive from FAT32 to NFTS to overcome the
4
GB barrier imposed by FAT32. I have a couple of questions regarding
this....

1 - Is there an alternative to doing this? I have an old W98SE machine
that
I would like to back up on this HDD as well. Win98 will not recognize an
NFTS
drive, will it?
2 -Is it better to just copy essential files onto the backup HDD using
Windows explorer, or perform a complete C drive backup using the backup
utility?
3 - Is it better to have one HUGE 40 GB backup file(on an NFTS drive), or
a
backup that is split into 10 - 4 GB files( on a FAT 32 drive?) Would I
need
to purchase software to split the backup into 4GB files? Which software is
best?
4 - If I decide to change to NFTS, then can I just reformat the new
external
HDD to make it an NFTS drive? What allocation unit size should I use
(there
are several choices ranging from "default" to 4096 bytes) I know that if
I
reformat the drive, I will lose all data on it... not a problem.
5 -Are there any programs out there that backup faster than the backup
utility that is packaged with WinXP Home? I tried backing up my C drive
last
night and the data transfer rate was about 120 MB/min (which would
translate
into about 6 hours to back up 40 GB)

Thanks,
Ian

Go to http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/FAT32.htm for an
explanation of the size limits for a FAT32 partition.

If you intend to dedicate the external drive to an NFTS machine then format
NFTS but if you are uncertain which machine will require to read the drive
format FAT32. If you intend to 'backup' the whole drive then use 'imaging'
software such as Norton Ghost/Acronis True Image/etc. You can use the WinXP
backup software to backup data files as you do not need to image the whole
drive at such regular intervals.