I bought a 500GB external hard drive to back up my laptop, which has 100GB. The backup failed and stopped at 4GB. I got a message saying: "You have either run out of space, or the backup file (.bkf) is too large for this disk." Miyako Abiko
Your external hard drive is using the FAT file system, which cannot handle files larger than 4GB (actually, one byte less than 4GB). FAT works with lots of systems, including Windows 95/98/Me and Macs. However, if you don't need this feature, you should change it to the NTFS New Technology file system, which is faster, more efficient and more secure. This is a one-way process and requires Windows 2000, XP or Vista. Since this is a new drive, it's simplest to right-click on the icon and format it. This will delete any files it is storing. However, you can convert it to NTFS without losing any data. For instructions, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881.
