Drive format and File size

[Clive McLaughlin]

Ok, so I'm not the most technical nerdy type of guy, so I didn't know to expect this. Before my A7S I never had DSLR clips that exceeded 4GB. It is only now that I'm discovering that Drives formatted to FAT32 cannot hold files larger than 4GB.

But my primary drive has nearly 1TB on it - do I really need to transfer it all onto another drive just to reformat to NTSC??

[Dave Partington]

1) Yes. If you format it you lose everything on it - so you'll need to copy everything off

2) It's not NTSC (which is a TV standard) it's NTFS :)

3) You could also try ExFAT for external drives it you wish since that also stores large files.

4) If you have USB3 on your computer just put all your files on an external USB3 drive and edit from there. No need to go through the pain of reformatting your main system drive.

[Adrian Tan]

Hey Clive,

Evidently it is possible to convert FAT32 to NTFS without data loss. Just Google around. For instance, I found this program: Convert file system from FAT32 to NTFS without data loss.

(Have I done it myself? No. Would I try it? No.)

+1, by the way, on Dave's exFAT suggestion -- it's compatible with both Mac (most of them anyway) and Windows.

[Craig McKenna]

Originally Posted by Adrian Tan

Hey Clive,

Evidently it is possible to convert FAT32 to NTFS without data loss. Just Google around. For instance, I found this program: Convert file system from FAT32 to NTFS without data loss.

(Have I done it myself? No. Would I try it? No.)

+1, by the way, on Dave's exFAT suggestion -- it's compatible with both Mac (most of them anyway) and Windows.

By main drive, do you mean your internal drive that also stores your NLE software? If so, you should follow Dave's advice and edit from an external hard drive anyways. If you have a Mac and edit via an external Thunderbolt drive, that should boost your editing speed too. Otherwise, a USB 3.0 drive will work well as Dave states.

Never know if my advice or tips help, but Larry Jordan usually recommends to place your NLE software on an SSD internal drive and edit from the fastest external drive (non-SSD) you can get with your computer. According to Larry (when FCPX came out - so this might have changed since then and maybe others can chime in, but) the way files are stored on an SSD doesn't help in comparison to a HDD. In fact, he recommended me to get a HDD RAID Thunderbolt external over an SSD drive external, which surprised me.

Either way, he said to always edit on an external and leave your internal coping with your NLE. Don't overload it basically.

[Clive McLaughlin]

Na, when I said primary, I mean primary data file - ie not the backup or archive. It's not the machines main drive - no.

Even if i had the space - moving nearly a TB to another drive just to reformat it will take forever! :-(

I suppose i haven't much choice though... Probably need another large external anyway to back up my archive (DVD files from weddings older than a year) - currently this has no backup....

[Donald McPherson]

moving nearly a TB to another drive just to reformat it will take forever! :-(

I thought nighttime was for doing this. Just like rendering years ago with old slow computers.

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Clive McLaughlin

Even if i had the space - moving nearly a TB to another drive just to reformat it will take forever! :-(

It really doesn't take that long. I have reason to move 5TB from one raid to another a few weeks ago so I could replace all the drives (with bigger ones). It happened over night, and that was for 5TB not 1TB!

Moving a terabyte of data should be only 2-3 hours if you have a fast system, 3-5 hours if it's really slow, but then I wouldn't be editing off that slow a system anyway.

If you only have USB 2 to move things to then yes, it's going to take something like 10-12 hours. Even so, if you need a bigger drive now, you're certainly going to need a bigger drive when you take on more work, and remember you need at least 2 or 3 times that when it comes to backups, and we haven't even touched on archiving yet!