I just purchased an IOMEGA 1TB "JBOD" external drive. It contains (2) 500GB drives. It is currently formatted FAT32.
I want to move a number of files that are greater than 4GB to this external drive so I will need to reformat the drive for NTFS. Will I loose half the total capacity or do I have to reformat each drive individually.? Will NTFS support 2 sepearte drives as a single letter or partion?
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Yes, NTFS will support JBOD, and no you won't lose half the available capacity of your drives. You should be able to format the drives into NTFS and have it continue to show up as a single drive using JBOD without a problem. The JBOD configuration is being done by the enclosure, so the file system on the drives won't cause any problems here.
I just tried to do a "Convert H; /FS:NTFS "and the drive immediately showed up as a NTFS. I then tried to copy (2) Microsoft Backup files (.bkf), 1 8gb and the other 42GB and the system gave me the same error message, something about not enough room on the drive. So I went ahead and did a full Format H: /FS:NTFS instead. Problem si on a 1TB drive it's going to take 3 more hours!!!
Do you know any reason why I shouldn't be able to copy these files to the reforamtted 1TB drive. I can copy these files to and from other internal and external drives, NTFS formatted drives just not this one that was originally formatted FAT32??
... by the way, just to correct some misinformation above ==> you CAN change your partitions, reformat, etc. and the drive will still "look" like a 1TB drive. The 1TB is a result of the JBOD RAID arrangement in the external box. Just like any other drive, you can partition it as you see fit; and format those partitions. The simplest approach is to just use Disk Management (Right-click on My Computer; select Manage; then click on Disk Management) to delete any partition you don't want; create what you need; format the partitions; etc.. For all intents and purposes, the drive is just a 1TB drive. If you want a single 1TB partition (like it is now), that's fine; but you could easily repartition it however you might want.
just had a quick look at the manual ( http://www.iomega.com/supp
So info above is all correct.
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by: archang3lPosted on 2007-09-17 at 21:11:19ID: 19910221
Hello lewis171,
I assume the drive presents itself currently as 1 single drive to your OS. If thats the case you can safely reformat it as long as you do not change the partitions.
You can verify the settings and reformat in "Disk Manager" (start -> run -> compmgmt.msc).
Regards,
archang3l