How the heck do I make my drive NTFS?

#1

To  add to my WD saga of doom…

I’m backingup my HDD for a reformat only when copy the files from Vista manually it says the following message:

‘Are you sure you want to copy this folder/file without its properties?’

Apparntly this likely means my WD My Book World Edition II is FAT32 and not NTFS?!

Anyone know

a) How i can determine what disc format/file system it is and;

b) Change it if needs be to NTFS?

Thanks

*sigh*

#2

I’m not 100 % on this, but I don’t thing the drive is FAT32 formatted. I’m not  using windows that much so except for the “properties” option from right-click I don’t know how to check. But there is a really simple way to check, try uploading a file larger than 4 GB onto the drive. If the drive complains, its most likely FAT formatted.

Since it’s asking about properties you might need to check the file ownership and properties using some sort of ssh access tool (PuTTy or something equal to that).

Best regards

#3

The My Book World (Blue Rings) or (White Light) are linux-based and formatted for a linux OS. The My Book World (Blue Rings) does not support NTFS USB HDDs except in read-only mode; it works fine with fat32-formatted USB HDDs however.

What software are you using to backup to your My Book World? Which My Book World is it? If you aren’t sure, provide the model number please.

#4

Thanks both

Lara_F, in answer to your question I have the white light version, 2GB.  I am actually manually backing files up over the network by copying and pasting.

Having looked into the warning message, it’s as if it’s saying certain properties from the file system wont be copied as the source and destination formats vary.  Obviously my concern is about losing data, not the file itself, but something associated with it?

So is it possible to format the drive as NTFS?

#5

If you format your drive to NTFS it will completely wipe out the operating system and will no longer be a network drive. Our network drives must be formatted for linux, since they are running linux.

Are you connecting to the drive using SMB (standard windows protocol) or NFS? I have never seen an error like the one you are indicating unless the person was transferring through SSH/linux commands.

Are you copying to a folder that has a username/password associated with it? What operating system is on your PC?

#6

Hi It’s from C:/Users in Windows 7 64 Bit

#7

Just to confirm the actual message that appears:

Property Loss

Are you sure you want to copy this file without its properties?

The file X has properties that can’t be copied to the new location.

Yes  Skip  Cancel

#8

Try copying contents withing the my documents for a particualr user not the whole my documents folder but contents within that folder and see if you get the same message. There may be some hidden files that are conflicting.