Posted by Nancy Camel on February 24, 2011 at 8:29 AM
I am getting the run around with Lacie online support in regards to a new external 2TB hard drive that I just bought. It is only holding 10,434,024 bytes (about 9 mb). Shouldn't a 2TB drive hold more than that? The tech just keeps asking me to send a screen shot. A screen shot of what? As you can tell, I am very frustrated. I want to be able to save all my Word Documents externally.
Posted by David Bostedo on February 24, 2011 at 8:42 AM
Nancy... If you open Windows Explorer, right click the drive, and select "Properties", what does it say?
Also, what did you do to format the drive? What else have you tried? Some more information is in order here.
Posted by Steve Kennedy on February 24, 2011 at 12:16 PM
Hi Nancy! This may be a dumb question but are you storing files in folders? If not you may be running into a system limitation. Drives can only store 256 files in the "root" directory. Moving files to a folder eliminates the limitation. Just a thought.
Posted by David Bostedo on February 24, 2011 at 12:24 PM
Steve suggestion is good, but it's also different for different disk formats. NTFS, for instance, has a limit in the billions for files on the disk, but no restriction by where they are. I'm not sure if either FAT32 or FAT16 has a limit as low as 256 in the "root" though - I thought it was usually something much higher.
Given that it's a 2 TB disk on Windows, it should probably be NTFS (although that won't be compatible with a MAC, if that's a concern for you).
Posted by Nancy Camel on February 24, 2011 at 2:14 PM
David: I have Dell PC with plenty of space on it and I use XP SP3. I have nothing on the drive right now. When I right click the drive it says NTFS; used space 4,186,112; free space 6,298,112; and capacity 10,484,224. The drive was formatted. I have cleaned up the drive, etc.
Steve: All of the 258 files I am trying to transfer are individual word documents. However, I put them all under a folder entitled Word Documents and I was limited to 50 by the Lacie to transferring on 50 documents selected by the Lacie from A thru Z(go figure).
Thanks guys! Maybe I just need to ship the Lacie back to NewEgg.
Posted by David Bostedo on February 24, 2011 at 2:23 PM
I'd try formatting it again and see what that reports when it runs. How did you format it previously? If you can't get it to format at 2TB (or something close to it) then there's likely something wrong with the drive.
I do have a question though - you said "I was limited to 50 by the Lacie". Could you explain more? Are you not just copying files within Windows Explorer? Or are you using some kind of third party software that Lacie provides? There shouldn't be anything about that drive different than any other hard drive with regard to copying files onto it.
Posted by Nancy Camel on February 24, 2011 at 4:01 PM
Actually, my son formatted the drive for me. Yes, I was copying files within Windows Explorer; not a third party software. When I said "limited by Lacie" I meant I could only copy 50 files to the external hard drive. I have heard no more from Lacie support. I am definitely returning the item. Thanks for all the help.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on February 24, 2011 at 6:56 PM
Nancy, I think David's on the right track. Before you do the hassle of returning the drive, you should have a go at formatting it one more time. I have a feeling that the remaining part of the drive just isn't formatted. It's easy to check:
--Right Click on My Computer
--Select "Manage"
--In the left column, select "Disk Management"
The right side will display your disks. There you will see your LaCie, and if the 99.9% of your disk hasn't been formatted for use, it'll tell you!
If that's the case, here's how to get it to work (David, jump in if I'm missing a step):
--Right Click on that little 10MB section and choose Delete Partition, just get rid of it. Of course, make sure you have your docs on your main drive first, lol.
--The whole drive should show unformatted and ready. Right click on it and choose Format, and the important thing is to choose NTFS, not FAT32. Let it rip, it'll take a while!
Once done you should have your drive working. I've had to do this to all my LaCie's I've bought, it's just part of the pain of technology, lol!
Posted by Jon Bach on February 24, 2011 at 8:57 PM
Many of the larger external hard drives are actually two hard drives in RAID. In RAID0 they would total 2TB, but often ship in RAID1 mode, which is better for data protection, but would only result in 1TB usable storage. You might check to see if your unit does use RAID, and if so, you'll have to put it in RAID0 to get all 2TB.
If it is a recently sold product, then it is more likely a single hard drive, and pay no attention to anything I said
Discussion
8 repliesAlso, what did you do to format the drive? What else have you tried? Some more information is in order here.
Given that it's a 2 TB disk on Windows, it should probably be NTFS (although that won't be compatible with a MAC, if that's a concern for you).
Steve: All of the 258 files I am trying to transfer are individual word documents. However, I put them all under a folder entitled Word Documents and I was limited to 50 by the Lacie to transferring on 50 documents selected by the Lacie from A thru Z(go figure).
Thanks guys! Maybe I just need to ship the Lacie back to NewEgg.
I do have a question though - you said "I was limited to 50 by the Lacie". Could you explain more? Are you not just copying files within Windows Explorer? Or are you using some kind of third party software that Lacie provides? There shouldn't be anything about that drive different than any other hard drive with regard to copying files onto it.
--Right Click on My Computer
--Select "Manage"
--In the left column, select "Disk Management"
The right side will display your disks. There you will see your LaCie, and if the 99.9% of your disk hasn't been formatted for use, it'll tell you!
If that's the case, here's how to get it to work (David, jump in if I'm missing a step):
--Right Click on that little 10MB section and choose Delete Partition, just get rid of it. Of course, make sure you have your docs on your main drive first, lol.
--The whole drive should show unformatted and ready. Right click on it and choose Format, and the important thing is to choose NTFS, not FAT32. Let it rip, it'll take a while!
Once done you should have your drive working. I've had to do this to all my LaCie's I've bought, it's just part of the pain of technology, lol!
If it is a recently sold product, then it is more likely a single hard drive, and pay no attention to anything I said