"Patti Barden" wrote in message
...
Hi
I have purchased an External Hard Disk Drive, usb2 & main power, 1TB in
size.
The very limited instruction manual says it is best to run it in NTFS.

When I go to MyComputer, on the left column under "Details" it says "File
System: FAT32"
yet when I right click on the external hard disk drive letter (F) and
click "Format" it says "File System NTFS".

Which is right?
Patti


Most external USB drives come pre-formatted as exFAT
which is a newer version of FAT32.

FAT32 is limited in two ways:
1) Max Partition size is 32GB.
2) Max size of a single file is 4GB.

exFAT allows for the creations partitions larger that 32GB,
1TB in your case.

You can test if your drive is already formatted from the vendor
by simply copying a file from your internal to external drive. If you
have a file larger than 4GB your can try copying that also and see
if you receive any error/warning messages.

Now as to which is better (NTFS of FAT32) for your external
drive (assuming you do not have data already stored on the drive).
I would do the following:

1) Delete the existing factory formatted partition.
2) Create a 32GB FAT32 partition/logical drive and assign it a
volume name of: 'SHARED'. Anything you want to move from one
computer to the next can be stored on this partition/logical drive.
3) With the remaining free space, format as a single NTFS partition.
Now you have the best of both worlds.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com