I don't understand why my brand new 3TB book is full after backing up boot files

I opened a support case a couple of days ago but have not had any acknowledgement to my message as of yet and I’d like to have a back up of my computer going on now.  I am posting here the same message I sent in for support.  (Freeagent Drive D is a previous hard drive back up I have on this computer)

I recently installed a 3 TB book and had it set up to do daily back ups no problem. Then, because I am on a new computer, I did a back up of the boot system, drive, files, what ever that’s called but it’s a back up boot disk and I did it on the external and now I can not set up a back up on this external drive and it gives me this pop up message instead WD SMARTWARE PRO “The target drive you selected was formatted with the FAT32 file system. Partition and file size restrictions of this format could prevent a complete backup from being successful. FAT32 only supports individual file sizes up to 4GB, and filename and path lengths up to 255 characters.” How can I set my book back to it’s original state or how do I restore it back to where it was when I purchased it so I can set it up to do continual back ups of my hard drive once again. In actuality, I’d like to keep these boot files and do daily backups of my computer but I can’t and I need help in understanding how to do just that, thank you.

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Hello,

You need to format your drive to NTFS. Formatting the drive will delete everything that’s currently stored on it.

How to partition and format a WD drive on Windows (8, 7, Vista, XP) and Mac OSX

There is a way to change the formatting without losing your data using something like partition magic

I don’t know it there is a drive size restriction on this or not. There is a command prompt to convert a FAT32 drive to NTFS but it dates from when max drive size was less than 2 T. Here is a link   https://support.microsoft.com/kb/214579 I would definitely make a backup before attempting this. You might also try searching for software to do this.

Joe

I did hear back, this is the instructions I received which did reset my external (and I am on a Windows 8.1)

I could help you to reformat the device back to the NTFS format that will support most backups. Follow this link and reformat the drive

My drive is a 3TB drive and for some reason I only have 2TB available at the moment so I did send in another request for support to ask why.  I don’t understand the 746.49 unallocated and why I can’t format that and get my full 3TB back.