External Hard Disk Size
Hard Drive Strategies
How customers choose to setup their individual PC's hard drive configurations is largely dependent on the customer's needs and budget. There are some general concepts about hard drives that you should keep in mind, however, when choosing your hard drive setup.
SSDs for Program Files & Hard Disks For Data Files
Solid State Drives, while they are completely silent and offer speeds of almost three times the internal transfer rates of the fastest hard disk drives, are also much more expensive for the same amount of data space (often up to six times the price for similar data size). So, many people still choose to purchase a spinning hard disk drive. If you then wish to further reduce the noise level of your hard disk drive, you can use a Smart Drive hard drive enclosure to do so, and still come out significantly ahead of the price of an SSD. What many customers will do, is get a small SSD or PCI-Express M.2 hard drive as their boot disk (and/or to run their programs on), and purchase a large hard disk drive for their data files.
Features of External Hard Disk. Now you know what an external hard disk is. If you want to buy one, you should know more about it. We will list some of its features below. Large capacity with small size. Mobile hard drives can provide considerable storage capacity. They are a more cost-effective mobile storage product.
- Silicon Power’s Armor A60 external hard drive, in 1, 2, or 5 TB versions, is no joke, offering a tough, drop-proof (up to 4 feet) exterior with a shockproof design andIPX4 water-resistant protection. The textured casing is also scratch and slip-proof with a silicon bumper around the sides.
- Windows support for hard disks that are larger than 2 TB.; 10 minutes to read; D; M; s; In this article. This article discusses the manner in which Windows supports hard disks that have a storage capacity of more than 2 TB and explains how to initialize and partition disks to maximize space usage.
How Much Space Do You Need For A Program Start-Up Hard Drive?
How much space you need for Program Files is a difficult question to answer. This is because:
- Not all programs disclose exactly how much space they take up
- Certain programs grow depending on set-up, temporary files, etc.
- Most programs need a little extra space during installation than the actual size of their program files
But, the following are some generalized ideas regarding how much space various programs take up:
- Windows takes between about 20-60 GB space depending on set-up
- Photoshop needs about 3 GB space (suites of Adobe programs will need more)
- Microsoft Office 64-bit needs about 3GB space
- CAD programs tend to need about 6GB space
- Video Editing programs need about 4 GB space
- Digital Audio Editing programs often need up to 16GB space
- Other common programs usually need less than 1 GB a piece (some as little as 1/100th of 1 GB)
80GB would be sufficient space for program files for most common uses, but we always recommend having an extra margin of space for installation requirements and any additional needs that come up in the future. A 120GB SSD would make an ample program file Startup Disk for almost anyone’s needs. You can then put all your other files on a secondary hard disk File Drive. Placing your program files on an SSD will make Windows start times and Program start times lightning fast.
One Large SSD
Of course, if you can afford to purchase a large SSD drive (say 512GB or more), you can put all your files on one drive. Or, some people have other means of storing their data and media files such as external hard drives or cloud storage solutions. But, these solutions have their own downsides such as cost, lack of portability, and/or dependence on sometimes unstable internet connections.
One Smaller SSD
Also, if you really don’t keep much in the way of media files (songs, photos, and videos), and don't run a ton of different types of programs, you may find that a smaller sized SSD drive will be plenty of space for you. You can go ahead and use a 120GB or 250GB SSD typically defaulted in most of our systems and you might not find that you need any more space than that on your hard drive. A small to medium SSD might, indeed, be an ideal data size for a computer used in the public service sector, where speed is desirable, but lots of room for all sorts of files is unnecessary, even unwanted.
One Spinning Hard Disk Drive
On the other hand, except during start up, spinning hard disks are still decently speedy. If you don’t mind waiting the extra minute or two for your PC to start up or your programs to open, your hard drive speed will typically not be an issue with system performance (unless you are doing unusually intensive work). You can get a better bargain in your PC configuration by choosing a single larger spinning hard disk drive (for instance a 4 or 8 TB Western Digital Red).
But, no matter what your choice, file space can quickly get out of hand with today’s media files, and is frequently overlooked. When selecting your PC, it is important to think about current and future needs. How much hard drive space will you need?
How Much Space Do Document And Media Files Take?
How much space documents and other files take up is even harder to estimate, than to estimate the space requirements for program files. Document sizes, pdf files, movie sizes, photo sizes, audio file sizes, all vary widely depending on length, size, format, and what is included inside of them.
However, the following are some generalized ideas regarding how much space various programs take up:
2GB Hard Drive Space Can Hold About
- 1 hour MPEG-2 video
- 65 typical Semi-Pro Camera RAW images
- 400 3000 x 2000px JPG files
- 200-500 typical PDF Documents
- 5000 3-4 minute mp3 Songs
- 1000 to 200,000 typical Excel documents
- 8000 to 200,000 typical Word documents (without images in them)
*Raw video footage can take upwards of 700 GB hard drive space for one hour's worth of footage. See this handy video size calculator to help determine your hard drive needs.
Total Hard Drive Space Needed
You can see that between the need for 80 to 120 GB of space just for Windows and other Programs, plus the space requirements of the document and media files listed above, that you can easily run out of room in a 120GB or 250GB hard drive. This is especially true if you tend to save many Photos, PDFs, or Videos on your PC. You should plan accordingly when selecting your custom PC configuration.
Always Make Sure You Overplan
All hard drives, whether spinning hard disks or solid state drive (SSD), work more efficiently if they have ample space left on them. Anytime your hard drive is mostly full (say 80% or more), your hard drive speed will slow down substantially. Keep this extra space requirement in mind when choosing your hard drive. A 120GB hard drive is really only about a 95GB hard drive, a 250GB is really only about 200GB, a 1TB is really only about 820GB, in terms of useful space.
Scratch Disks
If you run Photoshop or Video software, it is also recommended that you get a Scratch Disk in order to speed up your PC when working with large, layer intensive files. An appropriate Scratch Disk for Photoshop might be 120GB hard drive – if you want to keep open up to 30 RAW Images at one time. Professional video editing programs should also be set up to use Scratch Disk and should have a scratch disk of at least 120GB, bigger is better, depending on how much video you work with.
Case: the file is too large for the destination file system
External Hard Disk Seagate Backup Plus
For security or portability reason, you may want to store important data on a removable device, but end up finding the file too large to copy to external hard drive or USB. One possible reason is that the file is really larger than the available space of the external hard drive. But the most likely situation is as in this case - the file is too large for the destination file system.
It happens because each file system has its own size limitation. FAT (also known as FAT16) only supports a file up to 2 GB, FAT32 supports up to 4 GB, as for NTFS, the maximum file size is 16 TB. You can’t transfer a file that exceeds the limit of the destination drive even when it has plenty of spare space.
Such being the case, you can take following measures to fix the problem.
How to fix the problem that a file too large for external hard drive?
If a file is too large to copy to external hard drive, or too large to transfer to USB, you should check the available space and file system of the destination drive at first, and then pick a solution according to your case.
Method 1. Use a larger external hard drive or USB
If the file is truly larger than the spare space of the device, you can take the most direct way – prepare a larger external hard drive or USB drive. For instance, when the file is 5 GB and your external hard drive has only 4 GB available space, you cannot complete the transferring no matter which file system it is. The best solution is to replace the device with a larger one. If you don’t have any, please refer to Method 4.
Method 2. Convert the file system to NTFS
External Hard Disk Not Detected
If you receive the file too large for the destination file system message while the external hard drive has sufficient space, the first possibility is your destination drive has been formatted to FAT/FAT32, which has a maximum size limit of 2 GB/4 GB. Thus you can’t transfer any file beyond the amount unless you convert the file system to NTFS.
To check the file system information, first open the File Explorer > right-click the external hard drive > choose Properties > find File system under General tab.
★ Convert file system without losing data:
If you’ve stored some files in the external hard drive, this may be the best way to convert file system without data loss.
1. Press Windows logokey + R at the same time. Type cmd in the box and click OK.
2. Type the command: convert n: /fs:ntfs (“n” refers to the drive letter of external hard drive).
3. Press Enter key to run it, and enter the volume label (name) if required. Within a few minutes, FAT32 formatted external hard drive will be converted to NTFS successfully.
Note: There are chances that you fail to convert file system to NTFS due to low disk space, non-standard cluster, non-continuous volume, etc. If so, you can go to Method 4.
★ Re-format the drive directly:
This solution can help you convert FAT/FAT32 to NTFS or vice versa, but it will erase all data on the drive. Therefore, you’d better backup external hard drive before formatting.
1. Open File Explorer, right-click the drive and choose Format...
2. Find File system select box in the popping out windows, choose the option you want from the drop-down menu. Here choose NTFS.
3. Click Start and then OK to confirm the operation. Wait for a while, this external hard drive will be converted to NTFS successfully.
Tips: Alternatively, you can right-click the drive in Disk Management and Format it in similar way.
Method 3. Re-connect the external hard drive or USB
If you find the file too large for destination file system when the drive is already NTFS formatted, it’s probably because it's still identified as FAT/FAT32. Then you can try re-connecting the drive without physically unplugging it.
1. Right-click Start button and choose Device Manager, or directly search for it.
2. Find the external hard drive or USB drive in the list, right-click it and choose Disable.
3. Wait for a while and then Enable it.
Alternatively, you can open Disk Management, right-click the drive and choose Eject. And to re-connect it, you need to change its status to Online.
Method 4. Backup a large file into multiple smaller images
If all the solutions fail and you don’t have another usable device as destination, how to copy large files to external hard drive? Well, maybe you should give up copying and pasting manually, because a backup image takes up less space than an exact copy.
With practical software like AOMEI Backupper Standard, you can backup large files to external hard drive with preferred compression level, or even split large image into multiple smaller files. Thus the file too large for destination file system error could be readily solved without conversion. Even if the external hard drive has insufficient space, you can store these image files in multiple devices.
What’s more, as a complete Windows backup program, AOMEI Backupper provides file/folder/partition/system/disk level backup along with various backup options – schedule backup, full backup, incremental backup, differential backup, intelligent sector backup, exact backup, etc.
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You can effortlessly use the software for daily data protection, and once there’s an image file too large to transfer to USB or external hard drive, you can split it into smaller size. Here’s an example:
How to copy large files to FAT32 external hard drive without converting to NTFS?
Preparations: Install the software on your computer and connect the external hard drive properly.
1. Open AOMEI Backupper, go to Backup tab and choose File Backup.
2. Click Add Folder or Add File to locate the folders or files you want to backup to external hard drive.
3. Select the connected external hard drive as the destination.
4. Click Options > Advanced > Splitting to specify the size you want to split the image file into. Click OK to confirm it.
◆ You can select Automatic or Choose a predetermined size to fit in different devices. If you upgrade to Professional edition, you can also Custom size as you like. But please note the minimum image file size is 50MB.
◆ If you want to further shrink the image file, you can go to Compression section (above Splitting) and select a higher compression level. The higher the level, the smaller the image, and the longer it will take.
5. Click Start Backup and wait for it to finish.
Tips:
After splitting, it’s recommended to keep these image files in the same directory to ensure the convenience of data management.
Schedule: If you want to keep the backup in external hard drive up-to-date, you can add a schedule to run the task automatically, but the destination drive should always be connected in this case. As for schedule options, you have Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Event triggers and USB plug in. The last 2 are available in advanced editions.
Scheme: Backup scheme in advanced editions can delete the older backups automatically to save your storage space.
Verdict
Don't panic when your file is too large to copy to external hard drive. Take some time to try above methods, or use AOMEI Backupper Standard to backup the large file into multiple smaller images. Considering external hard drives could be damaged or lost easily, you can use this freeware to backup files to cloud drives, network or NAS devices as well.
In addition, if you want to copy a partition or a disk for hard drive replacement, the Clone feature also comes in handy. With the intelligent clone technology, you can even clone a larger drive to a smaller SSD.