# [SOLVED] There is not enough free disk space... again



## LuckyCharms (Dec 6, 2007)

So this is what i first thought to be the same old problem with windows device manager telling me the disk has 60gb free, and windows telling me its full... or so I thought. Lets start at the begging of this story... First I had been running dc++ and downloading stuff to my external hd, and one day, i notice it telling me that there is no space left on the disc. I check device manager, and it says that i have something like 5 gb left. So, I think its probably just a bunch of fragmented files sapping the remainder of the space. But, I was too lazy to defrag it at the time, since the drive is 200gb and over usb interface and was probably gonna take all night had i actually tried. So i change the download folder to my local hd, and run things that way for a while. 

So, in about a week, I discover that my local hd has also been filled... time to take out the cyber-trash as it were (yes, device manager still said i had space left, but it was only like 5%, so i didn't think there was a problem). However, upon opening up about another 15% of my internal hd, i discovered that windows still told me my drive was full. 

So I lurked around the intarweb and found the whole defrag then disk check method. Did that on my internal - worked fine. Did the same thing to my external, nada. I have 60 gb free, according to device manager, and can't upload an 8gb file onto it. I can, however, upload a 5.5 gb folder, but cannot upload a 6 gb file. I tried to put the file in a folder to check if my roommate put paint thinner in my water, but apparently i was not retarded.

What have i done so far to try to fix this shiz:
defragged the problem drive,
rebooted and ran disk check,
tried freeing up more space,
currently working on compressing my file.

The really odd thing is that i tried to copy a 10 gb file already on that drive to a different location on that drive, and it said it was fine and would take about 20 min...

If it matters, im running win xp, fully updated, on a dell D630 laptop, with the 2ghz c2d 4mb l2 cache cpu, 2 gb ram, 80 gb internal hd, 200 gb external (the problem child... maybe i dropped it on its head and now its special?)(does it like tater tots too?)...

I will continue to lurk, but maybe someone here can save me some time and trouble...?


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## LuckyCharms (Dec 6, 2007)

*Re: There is not enough free disk space... again*

Wait... can this be due to the fact that my external drive is using fat32?


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## LuckyCharms (Dec 6, 2007)

*Re: There is not enough free disk space... again*

Ok, yeah, that seems to have been the problem... converted to ntfs and seems to be working...


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

*Re: There is not enough free disk space... again*

Quite right. FAT32 limits your file size. If you're using FAT32 you can't have a file larger than either 2GB or 4GB .. I always forget which one it is .. it's Limited by 24 bit addressing. NTFS uses (with the latest techniques) LBA48 addressing which also allows you to exceed the 137GB limit .. another common cause of drive problems using drives >137GB.


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