Backup to external harddrive

Please tell me how I would go about programing Acronis home 9.0 software to backup into fewer image segments. I did one backup image using Acronis TI 9.0 defaults and obtained 11 segments yesterday. Today, I went into the settings prior to backing up & using their estimated size of backup (approx. 33 GB) & set backup size to 34 GB wanting to obtain only 1 image if possible and
received 11 segments back today also. This is all happening when I direct image to be downloaded to my external drive.

When I backup to my Windows XP C drive I don't seem to have this problem.
This really is a small issue now but after 2 or more full images I would have over 22 segmented pieces!

Acronis Home 9.0 is a great product and I have had no other problems with it thus far but just need to iron out a few kinks. Thanks in advance for any assistance you all can send my way.

Aarond38

 

Your external drive is most likely formatted using FAT32. The maximum individual file size using FAT32 is 4GB and that's why you see so many "segments" when imaging 33GB of data. Formatting the drive to NTFS will eliminate this problem.

 

Hey Howie, thanks for the quick comeback, I really appreciate it. That explains my dilemma! You are correct, my external HD is FATS32. How do I go about formatting the drive to NTFS? Can it be done by Acronis TI 9.0 Home
software or possible by my XP Pro setup? Anyone else?
Have a great day.

Aarond38

 

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx

 

Windows XP will convert fat32 to ntfs, but I don't know if this applies to an external drive. Also Partition Magic will do this and will not affect existing files on the drive.

 

Thanks for the info., I'll check into it ASAP.

Aarond38

 

What has been suggested is to Convert the external drive rather than a format. If instead you want to format the drive to NTFS (all info on it will be lost) you can do this from Disk Management in Windows XP. With the drive connected do a search for file diskmgmt.msc and open it up. The file is most likely in the C:\Windows\System32 folder. You should be able to select the drive and right-click on it to open the option to format. Realize that once it is formatted to NTFS it will not be usable on Win9X systems and returning to FAT32 is not an easy matter.